176-10030-10085 [2025 RELEASE UNDER THE PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY ASSASSINATION RECORDS ACT OF 1992 |
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AGENCY: NARA
RECORD NUMBER: 176-10030-10085

RECORD SERIES: ORAL HISTORY-INTERVIEWS

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ORIGINATOR: ‘CITIZEN
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TITLE: ORAL HISTORY WITH EDWARD LANSDALE BY DENNIS O'BRIEN

DATE: © 07/11/1970
PAGES: = 123

SUBJECTS :
. BAY OF PIGS

DOCUMENT TYPE: TRANSCRIPT
CLASSIFICATION: ‘Not Marked
RESTRICTIONS: Open in Full
CURRENT STATUS: —Redact
-DATEOF LASTREVIEW: 06/05/1998 , '

(
OPENING CRITERIA :

ce

COMMENTS : Pages 3-21 and 28-34 talk about the Bay of Pigs. Pages 96 and 98 have been sanitized.

O'BRIEN:

ae

LANSDALE: .

Cc

ShNITILED mu 99 4 oo

Oral History Interview

/ with
Died G
TER, Lansdale

July 11, 1976
Alexandria, Virginia

By Dennis J. O'Brien

For the John F. Kennedy Library

I think a logical place to begin in anything _

like this is just.simply with the question,

when did you first meet President Kennedy,
or Senator Kennedy, if you met him before
he was President? .

I don't recall meeting him before, he was
Tv ke yen

Presidentg. The first meeting,was Tebelieve,  —

the first Saturday following the inauguration,

' whatever date that was. I.was called into a-
_ meeting in the White House by {Robert S.J

"McNamara. It was a neeting, bm, actually, on

-a report ‘that I had written for (Dwight D>).

—o—_—

Eisenhower, It was sort : of ay I'm not sure.


O'Brien:

——

_ LANSDALE

O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
"O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

~2-

that it was, NSC {National Security Council]
meeting but it was comparable to that with
the personnel that were: attending. There were
several Secretaries: | Defense, State, and his

National Security people were there.

Goud
Bed Sowo mee ose scone with McNamara and [Roswell a

A
Gh patie, wembers of the incoming administra- |

tion, before they actually assumed office?
Just before, that is,a day or so before. I'd
been in Vietnam tor ‘a brief visit and got back
just before the inaugural, maybe two or three
days, and at that time both McNamara and. .

; Gilpatric were in Defense getting briefed for

their new jobs. I met them at that time.
The outgoing Deputy Secretary of Defense asked .

me to start working with Gilpatric, and so I
jo Know A ;
got pGilpatric rather than MeNamarae,
* pTames 4
This is, Douglas.

Douglas, Jim Douglase@ai eszHiDouglas)>

How is Douglas to. work with, while you're with
AN

him? Is he a prevty. sympathetic person?

Yes, very much so, very much sog He was ‘the

one, actually, who wrote the orders and back-


O! BRIEN: |

LANSDALE:

stopped my visit to Vietnam, and back-

_ Stopped it principally so that I could take

a look at some of the political factors as

well as economic, military, and psychological *

‘and everything else. This, frankly, took a

consi." oe " .. -vanding on his part —
. vat because my - views weren't always .

sopular in other parts of the government

I gathered that there was some opposition to:

my going out, and he insisted on’ it.

i'd like to ‘come back to that. I wonder if

we could g0 on to talk about one. of the major

problems, which | is Cuba. When is the first
A: co

"time that you hear.about the Bay of Pigs

invasion® not the Bay of Pigs, but the plans%5,
Sometime in the fall of ointy. I think thas
I heard’ of it about the first time that it
was brought up to the arear-policy group of
the Eisenhower administration. I was the
Peputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense,
at the ‘time, for Special Operations. and used
to accompany the Beputy Secretary, who was a.

member of the jmberpolicy group, to most of

~h

; the meetings that tr: - “ad. When Allen Dulles
Sep (Xilen_W.-Duttes) - 3% raised the notion to

this ANCL”

jthe/Senete” grour Iwas present at the meeting
- as an ‘Assist: : . ° | 7
O'BRIEN: What isthe 7.inking about it at that time?’
| What kind of operation is oO -» it
a basically a‘ guerilla operation at this point?
LANSDALE: Initially,it was. Initially it was very dirfer-
ent tham the way it turned out. It was based
on a ‘premise thet many people in Cuba were “very
unhappy with the Gastro. administration and the
way it was turning away from the initial
revolutionary objectives and the capture of ‘the
revolutionary movement by the Communist Party,
which surprised many of the supporters of °
Castro as a guerilla and as d revolutionary
action. Sof the thought was to back a number _
of ‘Cubans who either had been supporters of

Castro or were very unhappy s were still resident

in Cuba, and to cause some overturn at the time.

The change of plan towards the Bay of Pigs
qradur Wa) ;
thing evolved fairly regina end apparently

there was a | planning group ; ena’ CIA A (entra .


O'BRIEN: .

LANSDALE: :

O'BRIEN:.

LANSDALE

O'BRIEN:

-5--

Intelligence Agency] who were working on this.
initial plan who started thinking in military

invasion terms. I suspect that they were ©

doing that because 8 some of the Cuban military,

and military typesi, that is)very militant,

r “A

ke Cordele Onn BS _ “were coming, out of

”

Cuba as’ reiugees, )and they suddenly saw a

windfall of man power and started thinking in
other terms of use of. them. put /** this change?
was, the changed plan towards the Bay of Pigs |

Wand Jong. Ly

: dhe
thing,jwas well under way in the inn er circle .

thinking of CIA by December of "60, very defi- —
nitely 50.

Who were some of the inner circle people at
you. recall 7

this point pierre: By Salinger; es cot

CBRE MT beam LRicherd Bissell w was he
Let's seep ey Oh golly. 7 Dick Bissell /:

~~ KRichard-Ms—Btssekl> was the overall chief of

_ the group.

Tracy Barnes, was he in. it at shat time?

T as an assistant to nim,” Ow far

ach 4
Tracy,went in the Sotuar plarining, 1} have my

doubts that he-was. . . O°

oe

LANSDALE: .

"O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE: ”

He was one of a planning group who were
abs?

- planning the operation, but he wasn't jo chief,

and I can't recall the. guy" s name offhand. .
Oh well, maybe when, you g get the transcript back}

. LANSD LES Maybe 50% roy “nA
you can. » How about frer ‘some of the other
| places 2 . on™ weg ) Mat, I

qos
erie

“es, but initially it was all CIA. ‘They

‘borrowed some military personnel to help with _
Carly ow

- the planning pearkien? but they were People —

who shad been attached to CIA for temporary |
duty on other matters, ‘and they. hadn't come

' in initially for this specific planning. In

December, when the planning had ‘obviously
started-coming in with a beach landing and so
on, the way it turned out, I urged at that |
point to’get military planning in on the

thing. I was worrying about xt. Tas a matter
of fact, Allen Dulles brought his planners

to a policy meeting, a policy group meeting,
and they were explaining the concept, and ny
questioning was such .that Allen Dulles pleaded .

with me not to spoil the plan at an early

‘stage. I remember General (Lyman i
_ _ - Lemnitzer was si ting in [the meeting, —
a je vashhatvean of the JCS (Joint Chiefs of
. Staff} at the time, and he backed up my urging:
them to get some r*i itary planning in on thats.
After th - nent among our
poi’:, .-yie of that, and then the JCS set up,

a special section to plan along with the

8

Cén: Fal—Intelligencé: Agency | on that. “And who 7

the hell headed that?

—

» O'BRIEN: This is yet in the Eisenhower administration.
LANSDALE: This is all back in 1960. This was still in
théearly planning stagedo This was before

training or anything like that was put forward.

“When the JCS got into the act, I asked to be

disassociated with the project. I was rather

i looke
oO critical ‘of the concept, and HE wast JUST ALOS
Ol nao ,
clumsy and overt/ and a poor, planned foci ties
y)

é
O'BRIEN: A\lot of people have knowledge of this, by the ent
Aout gue
end of the Eisenhower adninistrationg M7
LANSDALE: I don't know how widespread it was. There ~

were key executives that were knowledgeable,

there was.a small group in the JCS that was


O'BRIEN:

"LANSDALE:

"thought it was rather closely held.

_ -8-

knowledgeable, and there was a ‘planning group
at CIA, but I don't think it went beyond that.
I don't know how far it was known, but I

. You don't knew whether the ‘presidential candi-

dates -. a at: all,.do you?”

Yer ..ey were. | There. was a very definite,

110, ‘wait a minute the candidates, no, I. don't

"think they were. As. a matter. of fact, it was.
in thie

still ina rather nebulous stage \wf, shifting
‘over in ears Novenbers I think somebody

told me, “if I recall correctly) that the concept -
was in the form of a memo in ota about ‘August,
so this would be well after the candidates

had been nominated and so on. I imagine that
Jus

ia?
- it was nea by ,two or three people in the CIA

A
; fae
at the time, At—heast, the rest of us certainly

didn't know it. I forget exactly when I first

heard it, but it would be possibly October,

put. it might have even been November, by the ~

time I heard about ‘it. As I say, I heard.

‘about it when it was surfaced with the inner -

“ . gircle.of our administration executives.


_ O'BRIEN:

- LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN:

‘LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN: .

-9-

Well, I suppose you had some conversations

with Dulles and.with Bissell and some of

these people about it.
Yes.

Wnat's their feeling? You already discussed

Ges

Dot a ce acing you to sort of

hold your: criticism,. . fo)
Well, ‘Bissell definitely felt the same wayo

Bissell was a very hard-working, intenselperson,
. or : .

almost high; strung type of, individual. He

became rather impatient with my questioning ~~

. of the. changed concept when it took place. DHought

thar
nitially, if: they had the’ correct’ personnel 7”

‘and 3 they had a correct reading of dissent _

inside of Cuba, that was a.fair chance to do

something. My only concern at the time was/:

o--

“did. ee CIA have tits Americans who could work
with such a situation? I just~didn't know:
eS)

of any, “put I was assured that there were such
Americans, but I'm not certain that there were.
Did you question the kind of intelligence that
was coming out ‘about Cuba and the expected

reaction of Cubans to an invasion/ and the


-10- .

reaction to Castro in general?
_-} LANSDALE: - Just in very general terms. =I didn't have
"enough concrete and specific information
" myself that was separate from theirs: Most
of the intelligence take at the time, avail-
able inside the U. Ss. government, ‘was pretty
colored with this dissatisfaction and state-.
“ments of. it. go) 1 had no real way of ©
'. determining the accuracy or inaccuracy of it.
Some of the adjectives used in describing this
- in briefings to, us alerted o a little bit.
- He
It just sounded too mach’, Feed a sales job on
a viewpoint. I'd question thet, whether that
was an accurate thing, so. this is about as far
as I went. | |
O'BRIEN: How dees’ a guy like Douglas react? Do you
| recall?
LANSDALE: Well, he approved of the plan, so he and the
~ others at the policy level approved of going
ahead with it Yana. developing it. . I was his.
advisor on this thing? (zhat was my staff ro)
“and I told him to be certain to get the JCS

to give ita real hard scrutiny and to come .


, O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

-ll-

up with details of whether it could succeed

or not. That was my last advisory role with

him. I was taken off advising on the project
after that, actually by my own request because

‘I was apparently causing too much trouble and

wre : organs 8 cks of progress.
"ets tae reaction of the Joint Chiefs, people
like Lemnitzer, tovards this? Is there an | .

institutional Tiveiry or bureaucratic rivalry

here in their minds?

Somewhat , somewhat @ It was a little bit as

though, well, somebody' Ss going to be playing

Boy Scouts, so this isn't really rivalry.

No
They had. a difficult time taking this really. .

aay ae Se Later, I know, when the JCS got
and hel

- in, on ‘the actual planning of this, they became

. much dione serious on it because they had a

‘O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

share of it. .
Well, do you get involved in the informing

. of McNamara and Gilpatric about this? Do you

get any way of sensing what their reactions
are on first being informed?

No. They had apparently known by the time I


O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

-12-

andl

met them) a. ve didn't, get in on that The one
person whos] a view of their reactions
tithison

would probably be Bill Bundy, (etane

pee who I know at the time was discussing

this with then.-

Did you have. ae _ .+ sundy and

his fo00 0 ou. as es that point?

Yesg ‘nis was a little out of Bundy’ s field.

- He was always ‘trying: to figure - out what: the

chances were, ‘the percentages of win or losse
a brft
He was, lowy ana L hadn't known the final plan

on this thing, and Bundy did, and he asked me

what I thought. I told him, “well, if the JCS»
maybe sriade -

guarantees something, you can7take, it 10 percent

lower than that and 0 along with itm I'm not-

sure that they know a clandestine operation, |

_ but they'd Sure know a military landing, whether -

it would succeed or not. Given some of the - . ~~
why, shade i

* unknowns in this thing, . way eat by 10 percent

and go along with the figure.’ ’ Well, apparently
: A.
they had given it a high chance of success,

the JCS had, because Bundy said, "Well, you mean

A py 4
it's going to succeed then’ I said, Well, I -


O'BRIEN: -

a oo. . -13-

So

don't know." Al gathered that he felt it would

succeed.

wet?) ‘then /‘you are pretty much out of touch
Lt om Hy Pount hot, rte wu bail é il
A

with it until it actually comes’ off, Yor LB) That's

LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN:

‘LANSDALE:
O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN:

A

eto ro) BME:

‘ didn't get inltet any of the changes in the

a
lans there at all! .
P Septernber certlang Wr
No. I left around the. first of,December, .

"60. I really didn't: follow it from then ong
Does

ftir’ anyone come to you from the Agency / or
from State/ or Prk the White House, as far

A
as that goes, and attempt to seek an indepen-
rae : awd ell on
dent judglaent on your partpZiper backend yen Pees

’ No.

How about the noise level on this?. Obviously —
you're out of it, but is there much talk

about it that is ‘sort of filtering down

, gerd ;
‘in Defense ‘ane’ the people that are around you.

that really have no need to know and direct
involvement? _ oo

I wasn't aware.of it. There might have been,

‘but I have no knowledge of that.

‘When @ne<thin the operation/ actually begins. *

and the landing has taken place, do you come

é


i LANSDALE:
_ O'BRIEN:

-14-
into it again at that point. at any time?

No.

_ You do become involved in Cuban affairs at a

. later time.

LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN:

_ LANSDALE:

Later, yes.

When ¢: v2 . you. have -any-
the. we WAT the (Maxwell) Taylor
connittee?’ ht 1h makes , Ha inquiry abit ?
I met with them Once eyand they weren't siterested\.
with the Bay of Pigso. They were Me nee

in the decision-making process\w# ia making bof

-policy, and ‘asked me if I had any ideas on

how better the President, could be served in
the policy decisions and arriving at them.

The thing was,right at that moment, McNamara

-had previously asked me for the same thing,
A

‘and I had ‘come up with a proposal for him

which he put to Kennedy. I just told then

oO a
Wet, I had some ideas but I had given then -

to somebody else,)and I was skeptical of the

Lo A
boss anyhow, ona this was on putting together -:
| © =

task forces. The Kennedy administration had

eliminated. a bureaucratic boot nfdoggling thing


“15- ,

send sat the hell was that called! _S-
O'BRIEN: “ocey ’ (perations Coordinating Board]g
LANSDALE: Yes, the OCBS 1 pointed out that the one
- , good thing about it was that the principals.
met for lunchyand I said the. rest of it's for We birds,
Bat te getomen in cc ---snt who are talking _
' to we we , os wea “oe ne held responsible by
. him for managing men, money, and material and — ,
so on, who can understand the problem well | oe
, enough around the lunch table to have one
“secretary or “deputy secretary or under er secretary
an ond $0 ON, Wasd
"say, “well, ‘we'll take care of that, 18,8
good way of doing business@ Sain the
. president's own national security man sitting .
in on it, going back and telling hin this is:
og going to happen for these reasons, why, it
.wasa good control. nechanism. F 50 essentially
all I told the Taylor pedple and told
McNamara in my paper was that this ‘function naa |
been eliminated, along with cutting out t dlot of
‘dead wood, and “there was some live wood, A flow

~ about restoring the live wood? This osentiatiy

was what my proposition was with the task force, —
7 A


-16-

of getting the people most concerned with
something? who ¢ could operate for the

a president, and having them get together and

help form the policy, get’ the president's
“approval, and they were the same ones’ who. a _
couldsst:~ _ vs. Ty immediately. |
| -~ 4.0% to create another big
vureaucratic thing. 7 and of course, after they
- first tried this, it rapidly started becoming
a big bureaucratic thing. The task forces
that were later set up were just big staffs
sitting;in different buildings. It was
almost like oc again, not ites but it got
‘ . -out of hand. - Anytime you Bey to change the
. government around, it seems to come right back

: Yee? "BREN? Ji Yes) we have tendency of doa
-in form again and close ranks on Fé But “that ANS Lawson

A
‘was all,I did with the Taylor group. Inciden-
tally; in that inquiry into ‘the. Cuban bit was.
the first time that I met (Robert F.) Bobby
Kennedy. For some reason or other, 1 didn't
-- connect him personally , with the pictures of
mP . 1 ners P

him and so on, on ToVq, and I wondered what the — Teo

youngster was doing sitting in the meeting


O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE: -

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE :

O'BRIEN:

_ -17-

talking so much.

Was he pretty tough . .
Well, he wasn't tough. He was the most indter-
ested of’ anyone in the room there of what I a
would say on things and plague me with many
questions. . -

How were his questions? Was he fairly naive -
about the problems? .

od this was on Bob iome questions of how the
"government would operate at a decision level,

A
and they weren't naive at.all. He had a very 7

good understanding. He was very much concerned ce

about his brothers getting good ane in the
way of information and full details “oO elterne-
tives and so on, on a policy decision.

Well, if ouy-you~know, in that period right

. after the Bay of Pigs--of course you had a lot

of contacts and friendships in other places
LANSDALE: Yes. O'BRIEN:

. outside the Pentagon.» What kind of an impact -

does
jcied?the Bay of Pigs have, let's say over in.

the Agency, and State Department, and in Defense)
a. —_ A

and in the White House?


218-

LANSDALE: It was a traumatic. experience ‘at top Levene ant

O'BRIEN:

of the government. I think it affected
President. Kennedy more than any other single
: - A

thing. It was almost a taboo subjectgif you

‘were going in to do business. and to get an

approv.? i. somethinre ~~ .ever even hinted

x pe eps Sach
“ao aba or .. wuban affair. It was) an

Sc
| dutensefitly sore subject.among all of these

people. I felt that almost all of the key
executives in the administration must have

dreamt about it at night or something, and
A

‘during the daytime working hours they just

yew

didn't even want to, contemplate it.. “and yet ;
they were honest. énough people that they knew
they had to face up and ook at it and. would ‘do
go,.but it was an: extremely emotional subject
with them, very much so. .

Well, in terms | of the Agency, there! 8 a4 “number

of prograns and of course involvements, in
A

‘operations that they have. Do you see any

shift in these, any attempt on the part of the

: Defense Department to move into some of these

areas which they felt were traditionally theirs


es

LANSDALE;

“A

las encouragement of some of the military who oS

/-19-

rather than the Agency. I guess what I'm
trying a say is, can you see any decline in
the fathey influence TGP the Agency Hef decisions?

Yes, I think so. I'm not certain ‘that it was
"well

_ the military as such. It might, have been the -

te Pore ye I Dike “Werranar personally,”

- were somewhat interested but wouldn't really

have expressed the interest unless they were -

directly asked and there always had been some
feeling of unease yt 1 think would be the best. i,
word to describe itj-among the military about»:

type of |
any clandestine, operations. They felt that

once it got over into guerrilla type of operations

, or anything that would involve a military subject,

shee it would be far better to let the military —
establishment of the U.S. ‘handle. at." ut that

_would be sort of a 2 dinner-codteil party type of

a gambit on their. pert, rater than sitting and -
planning and so on of We must grab some of

tht’

hid," | ven though among themselves they talked

that way. They didn't express it in terms of

. their attendénce at policy councils or even in

Sa mmm me


-20-

\
talks with people like the Secretary of Defense
or the. civilian, executive side of Defense. 7 on
this, I think that McNamara himself probably
- started thinking initially that this was a _
military operation and just to be more efficient
and effective, the military should take over
sich things. . I imagine that he patked that way
to some of the military people “tee? were seeing
“him from the JCS, and. the chiefs, and from the
intelligence community, the military intelligence
community. I know that DIA [Defense Intelligence
Agency] got its great start ‘under. McNamara,and -

I feel almost certain, I've got a strong hunch,
that the Bay of Pigs and the misreading of the -
temper of the people in’ Cuba gave McNamara

great impetus in setting that up initially..

Aso] a aotueliy, wasn't a military ambition
to set up a rival intelligence agency to Wve |
CIA) though there had been tremendous rivalry
between the military service intelligence
agencies end tie CIA and had been right along.
from the initiation of CIA originally. But this :

was sort of a business rivalry,and it wasnt |
A ae

rel-

sort of dealing with them, of categories of

‘work, and where the boundary lines of: who did
what on the thingy and this is where their
jealousies and emotions and everything would .
come up over almost nitpicking of boundary lines
of who would do what. It wasn't a thing of.
“we '12 do it ali, end you go out of business Jothat
A-
feeling hadn't come up)--but | bee ate after the.

Bay of Pigs, the DIA and its creation, a lot of |

- the people in that who were civilian employees,
oyeesy

“O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

Defense Department employees, had an idea, "We

can do a better job than cra," and in a much.

wider field than the service intelligence agencies

peed tone. i ,

Are there enough skilled and “competent people
around, in the universities and the military,

to staff all the intelligence agencies: the NSA
(National Security Agency], DIA CTA, and organi-
zations? Are there enough rece oF ae are phese
operations just simply too vigy, |
readies | They might be too ‘big. me need to
know things is a very elastic ‘bit. .-T'm certain

that the chief executive of the United States,

i -22-

in whose name these works are accomplished, -

would have no idea that he would ever désire

“to know some of the things that they're working»

on - very nerd you discover whole buildings

and all sorts of equipment pusildy acoumuneting
facts °-! ‘aren > would say, iI can't
are. a. euetOS OVER » needing to know “some

of thato "ak yor he would hesitate, given the

world today and the technological - “advences end

. .everything, it's very hard to say what you need.

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

got too bigan establishment or not.

to know and what you don't. Given this sort of -
a gray shading of the end objectives\on this
thing, it's very difficult to say whether youvts.

"4
Do you ever take this question up, or is this
question ever raised in the administration by Phe
civilian people | in DOD [Department of £ Defense]
or the White’ House, with you?
Not with me. No. My theme on overseas operations

was reiterated enough so that it was known by

_ a number of people, and I auntie felt a it was tr 7

more efficient and effective to have a very

small group working and to choose them with very


~23-

| great selectivity and go for a handful. of
- highly qualified people rather than a large
group. of Americans charging overseas someplace +
. This” went for intelligence as well as diplomatic a
and other. economic work, and so on. I used to
; point out the enbassies--for example, behing
_-the Iron ‘Gurtain--that would get. ae sdimated by -
? ->) being © TNT "de and so ong in Eastern Europe,
= for example, it would neppeng tha bosa wind up
; with an anbassador and two or three people
left in an embassy, and their work would increase
in quality, and their representing U.S. interests
would seem ‘to improve tremendously when that
would happen. -
O'BRIEN: Does the *epe that you get this reputation,
mainly. out, the writings of guys like [Eugene]
Burdick and Graham Greene, does this affect you
in any way in your relations with the bureau-
cracy? .
LANSDALE: Yes. It-made life rather difficult. With
- much of the work, I had to do in Washington,

I came back from a lot of operations abroad

7 and went up into policy-forming levels in


-~ch=-

Washington almost immediately, ana into facing
people who were very sensitive on my presence
abroad initially. Since I didn't just stick
in.a regular military category but would get
over into their own sub ject matter, this made
‘them very uncomfortableg I can understand
it. while it happened but it was carried to

| too great an emotional: length.“ at times I

“would suggest certain individuals be sent to
look into a situation in a given country and
would arrange their: transportation: and so ong
ofa I would get backing throughout the U. Ss.

- government for this thing/ and have an individual
approved by the Secretary of State as well as
Defense and up at the White .House and so on,
but would set up a means of communicating
back so that we ‘would get reports back. There
would be times when these individuals would
‘show up in a country/and the first time they

sent a message to me, the ambassador would

ask them kindly to leave the country, to get

out of there, just because of my name. I wae.
wash ©

apparently, the “enemy to some, of these


. ~ 25-

people. One of my assistants was traveling

vetween-Thailand and Saigon, and there was a
: ony

‘coup going on in Saigon at the time and his

plane, which was Air France, put down--commercial
a , A vo,
flight--in Phnom Penh, in Cambodia, and the -
military attaché very kindly picked up this.
: d

guy and@-several other Americans from: the

plane and found a place for them to stay

until they could get another flight out of

Phnom Penh. He asked this lad of mine where

he'd worked, and he said, "In the Pentagon/"--

he was a civilian employee--and he mentioned

that he worked for me)and the attaché got
Oo A

all excited, called the ambassador, and he

was given two hours to come out of the country.

[Laughter] Ail he was doing was looking for .
ve place to sleep at nights so it became very

emotional and very silly, and detrimental to .

the U.S. For example, once in Indonesia, in

meeting our folks around the embassy in

Djakarta, I had spotted an assistant army

attaché, who was the one American, along with |
: A. ‘ “A

one of the economic mission guys--there were


-26-

“two Americans, “who” were not only best known

by the Indonesians but were respected, and

"there was an. affection theres. era I eae, told

the ambassador at the time, afterwards, make
real use of these people 4, the Indonesians
believe them, and there's some antipathy towards
_the U. S.y:. -but they make an exception, “te” these

vi

twopant they! ‘re just invaluablebut t the army

man was extremely close to the general staff

of the Indonesian army. I went on some visits

to members at their homes of the Indonesian Cowell
staff, and this lad who was tall and blond--
a Nordic. type, if you will--would go in,and
the small brown Indonesians qweut ‘and their
families welcome him like a long lost uncles .
or brother or something. The children would
run up and jump in his arms and climb all. ‘over

x &
him, and he was Uncle “some thing® to them:

Fgo later, when ‘the Soviets start moving in|
A

saud’ [surface- to-ainr ni sgie] missile sites into

Indonesia and the U.S. needed to know what.

sort of antiaircraft armaments werdgoing ing?

“oe

our embassy couldn't get the answers to its

-27-

I suggested that. we. get the State; Defense
_ Sponsorship and send this one fellow uno “Es
a lieutenant; colonel over and just let hin’
stay a week or so. He'd go right in and
talk to his old friends, and they'd probably
tell him what the. Soviets were up to. He
arrived. there’ the Indonesian general staff
took him out and. showed him these bs and.
asked him what he thought of them and so on
the first day he was there. That night he |
got back, arid wrote out a radio riessage 7 and
asked the ambassador to send it to meat
; ; A

which point our ambassador told him ‘to leave

the countryg.——
. . LHoward P, |
O'BRIEN: Now) this was ,vones?

‘LANSDALE: | That was Jones, yeso eens? and he said, "Well,

art

asked the Department of state, 4S'please let
. “A =,

let me put that in the messages" so I just

Jones know that you're sponsoring this guy,
, “

- too,.snd there might be some more things that

he finds out that you need to know as much as

1

. } . . 10 . .
we do.” So they told Jones , just od sit back —

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:

28

and let him do that.

We have some wonderful Americans) and this

a
was what I was trying to ao): és to find out
which Americans have not only: our interests
at heart but weré enough interested in foreign
cou. ics to be my understand and have
mpot _ véally would be serving the best
interests of other countries: in things. I'd
far rather see one man get in on something
like that than’ send a whole team in with”all
sorts of enings ena sort of aggravate a
situation than do ‘something rather Simple. ,
Almost sensitivity training. . 0 .
o- ;

Beerspare: Incidentally, along these lines,
I've: got a good story for your account.
Great. : 7

About’ the time of the Cuban YAssile grisis,

McNamara caéme back from a meeting at the

White House one day and asked me to provide

the means for President Kennedy to talk to

- the Cuban people on ToVq, How the hell dia I

o-

know how to do that? He ‘told me shet+-he

wanted to do it within the next twenty-four

-29-

hours. Well, it didn't happen. I suspected

tha’ it. would take longer than that; I don't

: . 2 . - '
know how you intrude on a T.V. stations
A % A
broadcasting and get the people in the
a | 79° |
country to g¢6 immediately’ to their TV 5 Sets
.and watch a program. ‘I satied scientists
in from all over the U.S. who were electronic
whizzes on this type of a subject, and our
“intelligence people and everybody else I
could think of to get some information
' CR & ;
together in a real crash basis. ‘CIA couldn't
a-

give me details, e% technical details“on any

_ “A A
of the TaVa, stations in Havanfay anid elsewhere. .

‘Fone of the Defense civilian scientists--and I

dws
can't think of his name offhand; East European

name--left the room and came back ten minutes
later and provided all the. technical infor-

mation, to the great amazement of everybody |
x ;

. . \ .
there. and I said, Where the hell did you

. » .

get that?) and he said, "Well, I went out to |
: _ : oO

the corridor in the Pentagon / (where we were

having the meeting, wat in one of the phone

booths there, and I called a friend of mine

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE :

-30-

down in Havana who ‘operates a tv station

and asked him. He gave me all Pee" cope, and

I. just wrote it down." So this is the “way

we got the information for it, F one intrusion .
‘of the nv espace never took place, but we

got ‘the means together and some airborne wh

transmitters. Tt. was developed finally by the

bode thet the
Navy, end the project--Itve"asked +e~Se, put on

a sort of sled so that it could be picked up :

and changed over from one aircraft to another,
or. used elsewhere later when we- started the.
rly “oroadcasts in Vietnam, this ‘Navy equip-.
ors we)

ment that was “initially intended to let

. ie oo ©

President Kennedy talk to the Cubans ,was the

broadcast equipment that was used from the

da

‘air--flying in tne aircraft--in Saigon ) downs ¢

to initiate aN S vroadcast@in Saigon in °
1965.

“y

why didn't it come off? .
It took us too.long to figure, ways of getting

in on the theme and finding a channel and

. ; jo
finding a way of getting people thet” do that.


Bt ee ee Ce Re RN Mee net et vee reels eames # em elhenge

O'BRIEN: —

LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

+31]-

Gg
It took us t#en, ‘tuelve days to do it, and the
time for them to do it had passed over, and
A
the Russiaris stood down in the interim, so the.

need had passed.

. «Well how do you come back into. Lee well,

maybe, perhaps we ought. to pursue this whole
business of counterinsurgency first. It sort
of becomes the thing with the Kenne dy admin-~
istration, doesn't it?

Yes. oy

How do you see that? I was in the Marine
ftres

om:
, Corps in the late 50+s, and there was a good

: A
deal ‘of guerrilla and counterguerrilla training

that was going on, and it becomes a part of *

the new administration. Who are the principhe~

‘proponents of this, outside of yourself? ADO

you have any conversations, say, with Bobby--_
well, you don't really see Bobby ‘until after
Aprilg But do you have any conversations with
the president, let's say, meeting with him. ...

No, not didn'to ‘1 don't know who talked to him

about “his. ' When he came in office, this was

already « one of his ‘themes Where he picked

~32-

that up originally, I don't know. | I was
rather surprised--he seemed to have seen

copies of lectures and other things that

. 13d give on the subject, ae who had

-Q BRIEN: ©

LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

O BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

passed those to him and who had talked to

him about it; I just don't know.
oo A. Lo,
Let's say, let's take a person like Max Taylor.

Do you have anything in the way of conversations

with Max Taylor ‘in the late. fifties?

No..

‘How about the rest of the Joint Chiefs?

No. Taylor was’ opposed to this type of things
He aia quite-a considerable switch, see? He
was about the last person I would have‘ ever
picked: ‘to have headed up something the way
Kennedy asked him to do it© ,
That's what I was wondering about, Taylor's
role in this whole thing. He is opposed
Well, he was the one thatgZin the very early

: LA

a i =

ee nen atc ent mite de Pats fhe Meee pment

33-0

formation of the: Special Forces in the Army--

- he was Chief of Staff of the Army at the time J- —

and took one look at these American troops in

C headgear off," or “Take that--that's it." No

7 - teally aot Tough on oS

r
} ster berets, and he eked the" oat of

the thing. He wasn't too happy with a special

}-
| unit of that nature. But-at the time, it was_

' He went ‘along with the concept that

it was only a wartime outfit;Zthat somebody
A

would have to go and jump in and work with.

ae °
gquerrillas. again, this is a rivalry type of

a thing)so. there wouldn't be another oss [Offic
. 4 a “us
of Strategic Services] ~-these“d) be a CIA or’

an

‘

something doing it, but syis) severity se pare
: : ~ .

; . Ao. ;
of the modern military function) so” let's: make
oo “A
it military. So he went that far on the thing.
would :

But that was a concept- ~tyou B, have a regular

green berets and said, “Take that God damn silly

e

" force fighting battle)and someplace hack of. the
AK

enemy -lines, you'd want to blow up bridges and

A

-34-

gather information and so on to support.

your tactical force? so well why not have

J 4 =
somebody ‘in working and fomenting trouble

back there for the enemy, but connected with

the forces?” now the concept of people's” war-,
neo -
--Maol 3 wg Ls 4

fare r is pushed), We' ve seen fhent in Vietnam,
and Caseunerel~”fost3y wasn't something that
he or others understood at all, that almost

i weutd. be. a
jen of us sopeak—see-querrtliasor counter-guer-

. ;
rilla, and that people like special forces

\ ashe well,’ having learned guerilla operations,

would-then be qualified to start coping with

[exssen basis for operations and political
ft goals and behavior and the psychological part
\
\ of. the operations © This really wasn't in
any’ oftheir thinking because, as witnessed in
Korea, we went and sort of had a small World

War II in Korea. And in Vietnam later, we went

in-Zagain with Taylor as the ambassador, but

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE+—=¥-m=stre that's

ae

-35-

having quite a ‘bit: of an advisory role with

Mee,
ft ieee

A
3 wtALe

o
Our military commanders. out there, and influence

~

“2 .
with them, a fighting another Korea in Vietnam

tart Le,
‘more or less. There es some changes in

ns

ae
but ,was more use of helicopters just for:

oe

cal envelopment nathwetioaaarst instead

Star E
moving guys along the ground to,with the

Why don't ‘they come to an understanding?
+

Ca ;
for-you;-a*good-tape. .
‘@) +

. ——, . :
O_ BRIEN:——A—diversionwatuleast.

LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

tactics)
“A.
verti-

of
thing.

Poarking] |

“Going to thake-za--good=broadcast—

I'm completely. baffled by that. I just don't

know.

Don't they read?

They speak: the words, and particularly when they

A

were talking with President Kennedy, they picked.

up the words and enthusiasm.and responded, but

would show by what they did that they didn't

understand what they were saying. It's some-

thing that,. of course, I have been trying to


~36-

- do something about all along. I've never
‘understood what it was/,. .@ I've always
felt that I was too inarticulate or hadn't
' found a way of doing. things for myself, but-
there have been so many other exponents of
“this thing--not just Americans, but of many
countries, who have written rather good books _
‘on the subject and on parts of it,that you'd
mo, by pow ;
surely think, that we Americans would produce
a top Lender some understanding of some-
— DVo Nju en]
“ening that Mao [fse<tung}] and,Giap and others
: Qe +d .
. e “have gotten , every page down -hrowgh the rank
: and file to understand.
; ne
7 \ a F counteriasuege vd
O BRIEN: Well, in the formation of the CI,)group--it was
designed, as I understand it, primarily as a
kind of educational group for topzlevel admin~
istration people--when do you first come into.
that group?
LANSDALE: I was never really, part of that group. I was

working with a smaller group of executives, of

which Taylor was.a part.

O‘BRIEN:

“- LANSDALE:

-37-

This is Mongoose, isn't it?

Yes. This was a national security group of.

top executives.close to the president, with

the undersecretary of State, and the deputy
secretary of Defense,and so on, and the

on / A ee .
national ‘security advisorg an@ Taylor sat

in on those meetings after he got his CI

group going. But/ in forming the CI group

“inideiariy, Taylor was starting to do some.

“studies for Kennedy) and Kennedy had asked me ‘to.

- A .
help him: ‘So I put my staff in the Pentagon

at Taylor's disposal. "Initially, in Kennedy's
presence, I offered to put together a study

for Taylor on resources in the United States

‘and among our alliesifor such things--not allies

as much as friends of the United:States in many
countries--and this was done with @omz CIA and
some of the military services and the intelli-
gence part of State. They had a little working

group, and we had severallsessions in my office
A .


O'BRIEN: |

LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

president. Then when Taylor stpetedchis. group)

and put together some rough first papers

for Taylor to start his thinking for the
: )
; for me dq

, JA.
I wasn't invited in on ityand = didn't attend.
A

Sure. wee o wore r 7 2 got any insight. . toe
Aa. - viinu it, right after the formation

of that group, and early--it was‘in May or June-—
they dispatched some teams to go around Latin
America to survey the ability of various nations |
to respond to Castro“type guerrilla activity.

Yes, yes.’ |

Did you get involved in the planning of that

at all or any of the fallout of that? -

Just peripherally on both. I forget the,,details
on that. “I had been worrying about places like
a - _ . .
Columbia and several other Latin American
countries close to the Panama Canal and had

urged that this be looked into, on some of the

” ¢

. specific things that were being done there. I“¥s had
encouraged tie the colimbians start civic action
ao A .


O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

-39-

‘in dealing with some of the dissident

areas and so on. All’ .I had done was, not plan-

ning as much as coming in with sort of a .

‘shopping list of what people might look for,

‘and individuals in these countries they might

talk to to, get information. on what was happening.
Well, are you in Colonbia in the Kennedy
administration at all as. . ..

No.-No, the most I did was-+1 went to venezufla
4jfA during the Kennedy administration, and Bolivia,
: “A

No, by that time folks were highly sensitive

about my showing up in “foreign countries-~

that is, Americans, not foreigners--and I really
A

wasn't permitted, or I was stopped really at

policy levels from going back into Vietnam or

the phitkippines/‘or anyplace in Asia. I begged

to be permitted to go down and take a look in

Latin “America ,and Gilpatric Was the one thot play
A : a the: ALeis ion hod Kaen five

BEGIN SIDE II TAPE I ;
ou! fside of Venguslay : '
1, Bid you get to any other x countres?

O BRIEN:


easeede be seetmee

LANSDALE:

-l0-
Well, Bolivia.. In Bolivia, I was interested

in particularly the Bolivian Air Force's

_work of setting up a public school system

_ over in the eastern slopes of the Andes---

down in the jungles and in the very sparse —

settlements. They were really the one 7

governmental group that could get around

places. “They were very enthusiastically setting

up one-room school houses down there / and flying

_in teachers and bringing some education in there,
WAS “A

which I thought was a great project, andnencouraging
Then, :

them. n Mile Ir was in Bolivia, I gobinvolved

with the resettlement of. indians from the
Altiplano over onto the eastern slopes into

some new communi ties, in which the whole Bolivian

- government 4 was involved, efa the U.S. Economic

7 Diission was working with them, and the

, Botavien military was supporting it with trucks

once
and with, ‘people going in.. But/ this was a very

exciting, agricultural-community-type of a
project of moving people out where they'd have
an economic ‘chance at lite/ ana also a chance

to own land. It was changing the social


-ll-

ee el

yess .
structure considerably for the, lowest class

in Bolivia, and with the armed forces doing
it. This, again, was the very first. visit.
In Venezia, I had come up with some

ways of safeguarding our own interests in.
Venezvbie Lanicn are not only oil production)
but wet ave steel mills down there and a
number of thingsZbut: I did this as much for |
the Venezufilan Defense Ministry as I did for -_
the United States at the time. They were
concerned.

“O'BRIEN: ’ What are your relations with the people

: involved in the school in Panama’ which spreads

a lot of this este gospel of civic action

among the military? Are your relations with
those people protty good?
LANSDALE: It was. They had picked up a lot of my
. material from earlier times, in the form

Oe. and woes fo
. ; of -mémosiasd léctures,I had written on these

Whiten they set up the. school, I

sub jects.
talked with them on the program of instruction
that they were going to vise give. The first~-

adoption of any of these principles was in


O'BRIEN:
“LANSDALE:
O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:
O'BRIEN:
* O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

-l2-

Guatemala, and it worked very well there for.
a ;

"atime. The Latin Americans’.became quite

enthusiastic, though again jealousies come in.
ray . . . oo, .

They thought the Guatemalans were boasting

too much about it. $0 / when I was told that

‘\ : .
problem,I said, Weil, get them to emulate and

a ; ;
' try and‘beat them and get a healthy rivalry

yoo. ;
going, which is what happened actually.
I suspect [Fulton] Freeman is there as ambass-
ador in Colgibi a when you're there--no, Freeman

was in Colfinbia.

. Yes, he was in corinbia.

I can't think of the guy who was in Veneauttla
that was ambassador.
oh he was from-Arizona and was a journalist.
Not CHMauric He Beinbaun- LAvs DALE: No-
Well, how is he to deal with, and do you get
a chance to see [Romulo)- ‘Betancourt or any
of the political leaders?
Yes, I saw political leaders there. I had

a
five days in Venezu@la, and I think I got

A“
two hours’ sleep all the time.I was there. I
[c. Allan Stewet

found our ambassador there,at the time very

gad HAY qeor tb wok wi tia
open-minded, I wrote a ‘report, coming back

_ -h3-

from Venesugila afterward, and submitted itr
by the. time I got to Washington. It went up

" to President Kennedy as well as ‘Dean Rusk,
“and some of Rusk's staff immediately wired the
anbassadorgena it was one of these) "You don't
want to buy this, do you," and they said I'd
come out! with a report on Venezféla,and here
were the main omnes of my recommendations and
some findings. “He was just there five days. °-
He couldn't possible have found out enough
to come to these conclusions, isn't that
right?” Bless his heart, the ambassador came .
- back ‘and said, in effect, "I'm amazed that he
. found out that much, and the recommendations
ere sound, and we'd discussed this before he
left, and we're working with them already."
“vou | don! t have to be in @ place long. .
For example, we had a ‘phopty large American
community down there who themselves were

| practically governnentj: U.S. Steel. and all .

our big oil companies and so on. There was

very little relationship between the American

O'BRIEN:

-hh-

so . ; &.

business community and the U.S. Fnbassyg aad

I had urged that they meet maybe once a week
ye

or once a month-- the’ American executives and

the Ambassador and several members ‘of his

- staffyand have lunch together rather frequently |

and discuss mutual problems because the U.S."
firms down there had very large security

starts ?, (they were very close to the police
type. of forces, the constabulary ‘down therdj<
and tarde: tha embassy would be very. well inforned .
from this, as well as passing some of Ais

information back to these people;jand everybody
; "2

would gain by it. Well, this doesn't take

very long to. . 5 - In talking to the vice
jn cha
president . of 08. Ste Steel operations down there,

“you'd an say, "One thing you would change if you

‘had the power--what would it pel" and he'd

tell you something like this, you, so,”

shy it was rather easy to come up with pais that

' thing..

Did you find them fairly knowledgeable and
enlightened about some of the things that you

were very » +» -@

LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

Very much so, very much sope 2
‘Like rural economic development /’ and agricul-

dural development he

Particularly the oil companies, and I was”
surprised. Standard [Oil Company ]of-tewSersey!
showed me what it was doing because the. rigs

out. in: “Lake Maracaibo were getting blown up

and their pipelines were getting blown Up

_ by saboteurs. coming in who were ‘really expert.
oe “4

I found out, later that they were affiliated

with communists in coltimbi a and had come on

“ ‘

of
overs they were really experts at explosives,

and they weren't. the student type of revolu-

tionaries and so on, who also were present

“in Venezuela. * But/ in seeing what they were
doing; it went far beyond a. company paternalism
‘type of a thing for employees, that started
credit systems with farm groups and housing
projects for people living in the vicinity

-of their (ompioysesu—not thera | employees Ye)
much, who also gained a great deal out of this.

And’ “yen U.S. Steel, in ‘pushing its developments


- -hb-

. pater on o>:

way down to the south... *, Heeprobably _\
-wouldntt .do~™ ity ~he'd chew ‘the wire- “in-two" ° \
‘here: \

O'BRIEN: Oh my God. — This. a wonder: the- _nasn!t~elect?i=—
| cuted. himself! “= [Laughter]- -
LANSDALE: Yeah.-.It!s not yours, itis’ <gomo-of-mine =| |
OLBRIEN: Well;—E'm. not.. worried - about that.~ Wires;-
these-sort-of-wirés’ “can-be- replaced. "tm = |

not sure. ebout™ Jours.

LANSDALE" Worse than-rets.

oa . tow

_ OABRIEN—
en _-
--help-admiring” ‘thaty ee eee

eo or :

Yeah. @vell, _one of the stories on Kennedy

LANSDALE’

. Q- oo,
I'd like to put in was} «=< On my reports

from Vietnam in the very early days of --just

before he was inaugurated, and he read it 4
A
apparently right after the inaugural--one of
- the reports was a little side piece that. ra

‘did on a village in’ South Vietnam inhabited
by some Chinese refugees that: President

Ngo Dink 2-
HeuePank nd Diem had located down in the midst

of a conmunist-held territory, and I was very -

-h7-

impressed by them,awd just as an example of

what humans will do in such a situation, I'd
written it up and turned in a separate report
on ite ana about the Zz. a It was still
January, '61, ‘about ten days ‘after the inaugural,
A

my telephone in the Pentagon rangyand this -
A

oe

“voice that sounded like Rresigohs Kennedy's

told me‘it was President Kennedy talking, and
AN
he had read this report of mine and wanted me
to’ have it published in the ‘Saturday Evening”
& adhe tome :
Post. I was wondering which joker in the-
Vee | ae page oO
Pentagon =-yousknow, was imitating this ,
Harvard, Massachusetts acééent and was putting
$0 &. , ;
me on, and I said, "Yes, yes, yes." I then
A ;
had my secretary check over at the White
House)and sure enough, it had been President
; A :

2

Kennedy, so I had. to then go aheadg-I'd

promised to do itye figuring out I didn't

know how. to get something in the. ‘Saturday
Evening Post, but quickly. found, out how) and
they published this thing afterwards as a
report that the Rresident wanted published in

their magazine.


-y8-
OO . o
O'BRIEN: Wellsthets-w-—- You had takenj(of course,
: A
you'd had that interest in Vietnam and Laos. . oe
_You talked to a lot of people, as I under-
: in .
. Stand, about Laos and Vietnam ené the incoming
. . Nn :
administration. Did.you have any intent or -
- pyipose in mind outside of just explaining
‘the way that it was?
LANSDALE: ‘That was principally my intent. The first
| meeting I had with McNamara, all he wanted to:

’ . -
_ do. was, have me tell him about Vietnam, and this

was essentially what most of the incoming

: a .
administrative officialss+when they'd talk
7 ‘ ’ No--
to me-2 would want me to,explain what was
“2 aa
happening and what the situation was. This:

Ph ee ee te eben! anemia Dea

essentially was how and why I felt on. these
subjects, but my thesis right along on this.
was to help the people in the countries to
help themselves rather than’ go in and do
things for them. ..It was mostly on the nuts_

and volte ‘bef’ how you go about doing this, and

“Aw
the individuals you'd: pick to do ity and how

Liem ete cnet bbe ae

you'd select them, ana ‘please let's ‘have

highest quality’ and fewer people doing these

eee ree eer

O'BRIEN:

ae

LANSDALE: -

-h9-

°

things.

Well, you have some successes and failures

in--I guess mostly failures in the last of

the Eisenhower administration“ I'n thinking
in terms of Laos. Laos is the immediate |
problem in 1962. How do: you respond to sonie
of these people who are in policy-making
ositions at that time? I'd like to get

your feeling for themZ people like [Waltkers]
Robertson-Zin the State department-=prapie |
Robertson and [J. Graham] Parsons: John Irwin
in tife Defense; and onthe Agency side, people
like [Desmond] Fitzgerald. How do they see...
You have named a group of people,. all of whom
are friends of mine) and we were very friendly,
and I had worked with a number of them for “

enough years so that we more or less under-

stood each other sand could take shortcuts in |

- conversations and so on. All of those you .

a2 Ad S tn FAK S
named -end-—talked*with me expressed

similar beliefs to mine)so'it was very easy in
7 A -
talking to them, and there were others.in the


O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

-50-

Eisenhower ‘administration. Now this wasn't

true throughout. the administration at all,

but there. was a considerable group of people

‘who were in various executive slots just

down the second and third level who had been
through the . . .o{ Interruption]

_ . | £ the
Well, Laos,as I understand it,is)with the imp2tT 0 4

wa ang NO o, oa, ”*

aid that's going in there, th sit really
does in. some ways tear up the economy of the .
country. Now, how do you look on ‘the ‘training

of the Laotian army in Late 1460--2 159, '60--

_ some of the activities’ of the Agency in Laos,

as well as the army and through the PEO

[Programs Evaluation Office] office and things

. . ah
like this? Is this the kind of thing,you

envision in terms of--I hate to use the term

"nation building"--helping a country to help

- itself, in! helping people to help themselves?

Yes, as long as in the modern world the leaders
of the country will think in terms of as large
a military establishment as they can afford

in a country. And they do this without any

advice from anybody. This is just a natural)
_ . , A


Te4-

self- preservation type of an impulse on. their
part. Then my thought is: they will be doing
this. Then let's make the’ military establish-
ment serve the country in ‘a mach bigger. way
than merely toting guns around ‘and guarding
borders. It's usually the organization that
is nationwide, and there might not be any
other organization that's nationwide: in the.
country, such as agriculturey ¢ even the
administrative structure: that usually comes |

he . . e

under, department or ministry of the Interior!

. won't really have the manpower, the communi-

cations, and so forth) that the military forces
A. . A ; ;
do. * 30, given that, why not then get the

military to start doing, ‘constructive things

around and making full use of the manpower

that you have anyhow. Have. them be good

military men as the very first requisite of
thea
this, but, given that athere! s still energy
‘A Ora c4 pesth
and personnel, involved in that who have 4 lot
of man=hours left over that could do other ~
ow
things» and essentially this is what I was

trying to get the American advisory missions


O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

_ : . -52-"°

to do--not only: the military advisory missions,
, : . . A)
but when other egencies would get in and be

working.on these things, to themselves. become

‘interested in the military doing such things,

and aiding and abetting, including sconomicl
projects and educational work and so on. -

Well, an this Leoti an deterioration that takes
R oO
place, yeu~know the competing people there--
ia Nosavam ] ov

Phoumi EYongienit! ¢ and Souvann Phouma and

-all--how do you read that in 1960 just prior

-

to the administration coming in? boo

How do you see Phoumi; how do you see

Souvannah Phouma,as people? First of all;

have you met them ‘at any time ¢ a

Yes, yes, yes, I didn't know them well at all.
I'4 met them ae usually at formal gatherings
of oné ‘kind or another. The main thing that

I saw in Laos in the way of political stability
actually stemmed out of the king of. Laos fp this.
was the only unifying political force that
existed there in the minds of all of the various .

Lao leaders whom I'd met. So when the others

started splitting and opposing one another, I

O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:.

4 -53-
J gba Ce ;
had already felt that our best bet was to
turn to the king and force him --or, not
force, but to encourage himjito ‘taking the
leadership role that would be the one thing
. acceptable to all these leaders. ‘instead of
that, we were starting to vecone pantsin partison
ourselves there and playing off one guy against
another, and Americans aren't good at that
game. We have many Americans who think they
are, but this, I think, is a little too fo foretpx fo ow ndlueg
; errd ye fell in love with the factions and ;
and 00 ft
people, almost: unconscious of the fact that
“we were doing that. The paratroop leader |
there...) . _ | :
Hong Le?
eg Koad, who kicked over a ‘revolt had spent the
a night before his coup with a group of pnobican
friends, and there wasn't a damn one of then
that knew that he was going to have a coup in
the morning. This type of a thing I just -
found inconceivable. People get nervous’ and
sort of absent-minded about what's happening

at the time when they're planning an action

Le.

8)

'BRIEN :

LAN DSALE :

_ch-

like that the next morning, and somebody there

A

mong the Americans should have been sensitive

enough to have said, "Well, arent you feeling ~
"to Sno |
well ¢ or something, yousrnos;, and had gotten

some feeling on it. ut] this. sort of getting

. in bed with people socially, and saying, “He's

Odea alk right, ,
a good: fettow,, and" ‘he's my friend, and excusing |

everything is a common blindness, and this had
; A

worried me in Laos quite a bit.

a

“Well, I get the impression from reading of

this perioa/ that there really is some lack . oa]
of coordination in the various efforts that

are there—-cAotherwords, the ambassador is

' not completely privy to what the Agency is

doing, and the Agency is not completely privy

to what DOD is doing through the PEO office.

Do you get that feeling? Maybe in regard

; Loekn Fe \
to the Parsons-Irwin-Reilly mission that

goes out there, do. you get any feeling over Hut
at all?

‘Yes, I'm trying to recall. ... We hit a

crisis at that point, and the group that went.

out--Parsons was on home leave, and we had a

Bap

-55-

meeting in the Pentagon in the secretary of

a ) .
Defenges office,and there were a mob of

Aro .
=<. There were ye can't.

people theres

quite recall now what prompted the meeting )
. ; “A
ww a -,

but there was a crisis of some sort in Laos. .

And the JCS gave a priefing, that's right, as

‘ part of’: the ‘hing and it was on the Pathet hao

“positioning and thoy suddenly discovered tet

there were passes over the mountains that
had some importance to the Ho Chi Minh trail,
and this great discovery was being lectured
‘on at this meeting. F yd at the time, the
Secretary of Defense--I clit think, I wonder,

that might have been [Thomas]. ‘Gates Lin] at

. the time night have been, but whoever it was-—.

A

asked it I had a comment to make,and I said,
A .
“take a look at that map that the JCS was

showing us of Pathet Lao and the other situa-!
tions on the thing} and I said,"it should

. mo, A a =
tell everybody here just one thing. You've

SIs
got an- ‘ambassador whoz,on home leave heregd

he doesn't belong here} ne Perongs out in
: ‘A
Vientiane right this noments axa the rest of.


O'BRIEN:

" LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN:

-56-

you who are asking questions ought to have >

people out. there with him who would tell you

immediately and take a. first- hand look. "

oe

énd—the~a I remember Irwin was ‘picked

, he
right on the spot to go imnediately, and, said

4y
to me on the Side, "You and your big mouths

oo

yousknowe [Laughter]

Well; did you get involved in any of the

meetings on Laos-after. the Kennedy adminis-
tration comes in, and some of the jockeying
that goes around?. | |
Some of them, yes. I can't quite recall
which meetings they were at the time. I was”

in on some of the questions of the support of

Meos,

the Mass, the guerrilla forces.

wis
Well, hed did you see in. terms of a strategy
An

for ‘the area? - proreie-. O, a3 I read it, there
thet pare

seems to be some various strategies, proposed;

one is es =youcknos, going down the full road

behind Phoumi and supporting Phoumi, and

another is the panhandle strategy--I've never:

been able to quite understand what the pan-

i Qe

he
handle strategy was-~that ..yooriaou, rings

Se nenantined dmtamaal eRe Os etna Taken meat

LANSDALE :

-S7-

a bell.
Hinm,—yeahsvell;" ham, my memory isn't too

good on this thing. There was some talk

_ at the time dothere! 's high country across

_thdgolovens Plateau and so ‘forth down in the
south, and there was talk at the time of
that. being the dominant area,and what we
should dojvas to make use. of that and the
high ground in Vietnam end so on, across

into Thailand, and ensure that that state sted

in noncommunis t hands.

-, Well, there's also suggested in the Laotian

A

‘ crisis as early as 1961, the use of strategic.

bombing on supply routes, and even) as I
“A .

understand it, to “Hanoi, as early as that)
interdicting A A

jeweiekesing some of. the ‘supply lines, - as

' well as the suggestion ,that subsequently in

1962 does become a reality)” the dropping
of the ‘sbaTo [Southeast Asia Treaty Organization]
wn call tAaw@
"plan five as I understand it, How did you

‘feel about the Laotian crisis at that point,

in terms of a strategy or a direction of nich

should work?
a.

LANSDALE:

Neo,

-58-

Well, I had wanted the Laotians to defend
on
their, country, and Iwas all for the work
- Meas
with the Nees oe Sana so on of doing it.

. Once. it left that and started involving =e

Vietnamese or us, on bombing or anything
else, I felt that the cost ‘of saving some
real estate would be too high to ever engage |

ant oler wore
iny, And on the boiibing, I felt that’ as long

as you had all of the" communication with the
people meeks in the hands of communist leaders
such as in North Vietnam and then Hanoi where
this was pushing, that anything overt such

as aerial ‘bombing that would then permit them
to, use that as a unifying force psychologically

with the people would be dead wrong.” I used

to rémind them of what [Winston] Churchill had

“gone with the German bombing of Britain oh

“A

Fjust on radio with the peopleg and here were

‘leaders with complete access to radio and

working with the people),and it would have a
A ;
reverse effect. as far as trying to stop the

ambitions and aims and’so forth of the North

were,
Vietnamese, who af ter all, the guys organizing
, _ “A

-59-

the Pathet: Lao and pushing on into the area.
Wy frelt that more could be done ‘with the
7 armed forces of Laos themselves in making
them more able to stand up for themselves -
and defend their country. But if it couldn't).
I couldn't see an intervention of any sort — “
in there. Morally, we'd have been on a moral
ground then to turn around and start using
some _ international moral pressure )through the -
_ press and so forth, to sort of shame the. North
‘Vietnamese out of “nei attempts. I'm a -
great believer in exposing things to bring
‘such pressure. | . .
O'BRIEN: Well, how do’ you see the relationship of Vietnam.
. and Laos at that point, or do you? . .
LANSDALE: Oh, yes. The passes and the Ho(hi Minh trail
in bringing things down was one of the key
‘things on this. But again, there. was even
talk at the time of taking Vietnemese troops
in there, e—seoretiy;Zand using them up
to try and stop that, “and I was opposed to

that I didn't want to see intervention like

that from the outside.


O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN:

-60~-. :

Well, when does some of the covert activity,
interms of. the ‘use of some | of the: Mints nord s

c-
yerds- in interdicting those supply lines in
Qe

Laos 2youtkhou, from Vietnam, start? Is that

“A
‘going on in the late Eisenhower acministretion,
. “A

or does it begin in the Kennedy administration?
I think it was the Kennedy administrations= .
there had been a little of it,or there -had

been talk of tin the Eisenhower administration.
There had been: “thoughts along that line by:

the top Vietnamese pa

remember President Diem's brother, went Gor
far a in

his older brother -Zuent into Laos gf about

'SS or. “maybe: 156, and had come up with a scheme

. A
very similar to that at the time. He had

talked about ‘the mountain people of ‘Laos

’ being akin to. "the mountain people of Vietnam

“A

_ and wouldn 't: it be ‘good to get some of our

mountain people in with them,and ‘together
A
‘they could be trained.

‘Yes, well, you're. in Vietnam in the middle

‘of the fifties,and then you go back’ in 1960
A

in the late Eisenhower administration. What's

So le etn Rt te on 8 rater each at palette 9 hematin hl I cman eel me Ds ane thn adh Litem A ta dR, st Leacde 54 .

ote es ae ee ete

er

LANSDALE: —

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

~61-_

changed, or has anything?

A

Oh, a great deal. Excuse me. [Interruption]

What changes. do you find?.

. . + \ .
Well, the main change was in a growing isola- ) >
ed

tion from reality of the constituency of the {
President of Vietnamy a repression of, you,

might say,a loyal opposition or a noncommunist .

A .
. haw ; .
opposition to then in political terms a” “There werk

_ professionally some among the military that. - G
“was taking the Vietnamese military apart from
‘their people more than it had been when I had

left, because I-had gotten them working very :
. “A the pepe ON Qe . 7
closely with a number of aterki=sr~— projects»

A ana a growing isolation of the American
embassy in particular)but including some of.
. ; A
the American agencies, from the Vietnamese
; A
officialdom, and taking a very strange form

of concentrating on gossip essentially--gossip
ON

as much as fact--about eh,—what—the—hellts-

the: word-I'm-trying. to—think of,—ez misdeeds

¢


~62-

a prs
and so forth by, public officials or

people connected with the regime in Vietnam @
so that the information~gathering process
of the United States there was devoting an

exorbitant amount of time on sort of nitpicking

Tee co , - Ee

on the people that were in power. jgne rela-

tionships, such as the ambassador with the

. A . . .

president of the country, the ambassador

AC

would go into details of malfé%ance in office

me ' and so forth, or mishandling of funds by the

Vietnamese on an internal matter, and the

president would have to correct him and Say,

A
: : y :
\you Gon't have all the facts, and the ambass-~- __ _-
iN : . Ani
ador: would say, rYes,I do ) too. This. to me

e : ; A. A
was very poor I felt that we had some

Americans “trat were close enough to the top

3
4
?
:

: . : officials of the Vietnamese(who weren't

. present in the country always), who should
; . .

! . “A

be brought there and told, “Look, we under-

a , , stand these guys are doing something wrong.

-~63-

Can you go in and get them to start doing

things right,as a friend of theirs?" rather
LA Ge _ . .

than going aad trying to scold them and

ES
_

‘something and getting the backs up of people, .

and they'd figure, "Well, these damn nosey
oe “A ray
Americans-only got half the facts, and
since they don't understand us that well,
a R
the hell with them. We aren't going to
an do what they wantg" I just felt that we
me weren't playing a very wise ballgame there
at the time, on the American side.““I also
‘felt that Diem was paying too much attention
-to similar types of his own people, his
intr y
intelligence people, who,were sixty telling
him what ‘the Americans were Going too damn
much, or were bringing in alarming news about
his own subjects--and particularly political
oppositionists--and)I- suspect) manufactaring
A 7A.

cases against them so that they could take

actionsgard he,in turn,was getting too much
—~ A “A '

~

andwat which point he asked me where I had

-64-

secondhan@ from people) and this tended to
. . ' Pay . . .

_e . , i. ; . - . - .
isolate him more) Since his main intelli--

A ;

“gence officer was his brother, [Ngo Dinh] Nhu,
Z-

. A.
who was’ an ambitious person,too, I felt that

it was a poor arrangement’ on the Vietnamese

Side. -I personally urged Diem at the time
to get in’ touch with some-of his opposition,
A

been at certain times of the day during my

. ; NS ;
visit theres and I said, I was talking to.

your opposition and I'm not going to tell
. ¢ . .
you who it was oOr:where I was, but just the

mere fact that you know that shows that you -
were having me trailed aroundgasa you know

I'm a friend of your country's,and I'm
. A

trying to help all of you succeed here, and

you happen to be the elected leader, and you
“A

jolly well better start reflecting what your.

people desires a it youd spena your time

and money and efforts and so forth watching

-65-.

a guy like me, I'm sure you're doing. a lot.

. ; Hy
more for someone else you really suspecty —
Qo ,
: ana
O BRIEN: How would he react to something like this?
LANSDALE: Listen, I was told by a number of people ~

that Iwas about the only one'that really:

~

ever talked to him in this manner, and he

would listeng and at the time, ‘one of the

people most critical of him was his vice--
“ - a ' president, and I went over and saw the vice~

president,whose name was [Nguyen Ngoc] Tho,
AN. : . .

~ and Tho immediately started telling me that
the president had spies all over‘ his office
and in his staffgand as he was telling me
this, one of the clerks was serving us tea,
and I said, “rs this guy .one of the president's
spies? and he said, "Probably, I think so.”
_[Laughter) Maybe he'll go ‘back and report

; Jo.hamw >

this one. I said," When was the last time

you two talked to each other?” Well, it had
oO ; A

‘to get in’ touch with.some of his opposition,

anheat which point he asked me where I had ;

-64-_

secondhand from people, and this tended to_

A a
: . fs . . . : Q .
isolate him more, Since his main intelli-
. H _—

gence officer was his brother, [Ngo Dinh] Nhu,”
7 . . , . . Fa\

A
who was’ an ambitious person,too, -I felt that —

it was a poor arrangement'on the Vietnamese

side. -I personally urged Diem at the time

“A

been .at certain times of the day during my

. ; . \w
visit theres and I said, I was talking to

your opposition, and I'm not going to tell
you who, it wa’s or where I was, but just the

mere fact that you know that shows that you -

‘were having me trailed around ,ard you .know
| g \ y

I'm a friend of your country‘s,and I'm
2 . A .
trying to help all of you succeed here, and.

you happen to be the elected leader, and you

jolly well better start reflecting what your
an y¥ . -

people desire, afd if you™@G spend your time

and money and efforts and so forth watching

O BRIEN:

LANSDALE: |

<65-—

a guy like me, I'm sure. you're doing. a lot
| —_ . 7
more for someone else you really suspecty —
oe
ata
How would he react to something like this?

Listen, I was told by a number of people -

that. I was about the only one’that really:

ever talked to him in this manner, and he
would listens and at the time, one of the

people most critical of him-was his vice-—

’ president, and I went over and saw the vice

president, whose name was INguyen Ngoc] Tho,
and Tho immediately started telling me that —
the president had spies all over his office
and in his stafigand as he was telling me
this, one of the clerks was serving us tea,

. \ a : .
and I said, ‘Is this guy one of the president's

; ; ; .
spies?’ and he said, "Probably, I think so."

[Laughter] Maybe he'll go back and report

dee
this one. I said, When was the last time

you two talked to each other?” Well, it had


-~66-

werkt.
. been months» =° I, back to Diem, and I jumped.
oan : _ A
hime I said; You've got a vice-president
who you've made responsible for ali the
economic development of the ‘country, and I

wa
know that you consider that very importante. -

. . . mf, . . o . t
You haven't talked to him for a long time,”
: . he'd A
and I forced him to tell me when you'd done
. . \. ; : . .
it lastgso I said, Well, pick up the telephone

“and call him over here your first free time,

SO , — A

and you sit down and have a long talk with ©
no . ; .

himp. So he did itg He picked up. the phone,

mt : a A

and I got the two of them together againg
He was really out of touchm He promised me
at the time to get in touch with some of the Abs
political oppositiong he swore up and down
. « well,- .
"he wasn't oppressing anyones and I said, “Yo ou
don’t know what your own police are doing)
; A
u s, .
‘then, and-I gave him the list of names of
A

’ people who were in prisonf; who had been arrested

“at midnight and pulled out of their homes and

ce re nen er A S

Fe ern ents me melee eM Re ci Od de eek as eg wenn seme

O'BRIEN:

_ LANSDALE:

“  -67-

“SO Ong and he promised. to.look into their

cases immediately and do something about

: _ S : -
itm And I said, I've gotten this from.
; = 4 , . : 7
people who,in the opposition to you, but -I
whether _ Bee “A

don't know 3 e“you ‘ve,gotten any reports.

He said he‘d@ never heard of these cases,

and I think he was telling the truth. He
had no reason to dissemble with me at all.
on these things.
Well) why is this? Is it. the development of.
MA .
A ot te
an independent bureaucracy, or is jnexe—a

degree of U.S. influence on, let's ‘say,the
; ‘ 7A)

intelisgence, eae

There. was probably some. ‘I think by

‘that time the Vietnamese intelligence was.

way beyond any control by U. S. intelligence,
A

who. initially had been helping it, and Diem's
Bother Nhu was really--really had the bit in

his teeth and was his own man. And I suspect)
: : “A

initially, he was really trying to serve his

Anca eben ceeatteentd Ue Meee Sin A SRP A sd Pe meen Oa a As ni

°
nee ee sees re eS oT NRE tae en caeRaReNeeD

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

~65-

brother, and he was doing it by trying ‘to
get the goods on. everybody working for his
brother throughout , the government and anybody
opposed to his brother and the intelligence |
people picking it up) discovered that if
LA NO
they brought in’bad news about some guy that
the brother. didn't like, he'd pay them and
believe it. So I'm sure that there was

a lot of manufactured evidence in the
intelligence take that was coming ing ad

I don't think the Americans were screening

“any of that type of information because it

went right into the palace,and there was a
3

big room behind the president's office that -

had many files and was the main  personner 7

dossier type of file place.

Well, you're critical of the MAAG [Military

Assistance Advisory croup] operation there.
?

felon

' What's wrong. with it, in the late obs

A

Well, I felt that M2AG under “hanging” Sam

tts
(Samaed T. J Williams in the late Sess was

-69-

anfunusually well-run American military
“A .

. Operation. There were some unusual things

being done that made it so.’ one of them’
was one of the best ideas I've ever bumped
into. “General Willians brought over the
chief “of Staff of the Vietnamese army

whenever .the American advisors who at that.
. . - , oe
. . . Z
time were out in the countryside; but et
A

can ae . ,
wa at fairly high level.s,and were running

A, ;
training camps more than advising on opera-
: Qa-

‘tions or anything-But. when they would come

in once a month for a weekend in Saigon,

Williams would get the Vietnamese Chief of

| Staff to come in and talk to them. The

Vietnamese ¢hief of Staff at that time was
General [Tran Van] Don. Don was quite

diplomatic, but had a way of being candid in
oR : .

his remarks and not having them hurt too much

hain €§ nara
“when they were told. He would leave out, So

‘on, but he would tell these Americans what

1

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

-70-

‘their Vietnamese counterparts in the Viet--

namese army and so forth thought of them and

. . ”
their work, and their advice, and ‘the reactions
A , eo . ms
throughout the armed forces to them This

‘was the one part of the monthly gatherings —

with Americans around that everybody would

stop dozing off or thinking of something else
and would sit up and pay attention because

they were the subject of the talk,of course.
: A
This was a very healthy thing. oe
see where. |

ves, I ‘can fee¥ it F wevld bee

toe Zause even though it was tough diplo-

Q-
; matically, the most sordid truth, wotid— the

A Gee

hardest factgfwould | come out in, the,

; And then Williams himself had been in

‘Vietnam .a long eriough time by then--I forget

how-long; it may be three years at the time,
. A ‘
four years-~so that when he moved around the

Vietnamese army, it wasn't only just the top

stat £ officers and commanders who would be

with hin, but I noticed in a visit, there--1

ne

-71-

think it was '59--that sergeants and junior
lieutenants and soon would come up and .talk
a .
to himg and I'd moved in close enough to
eavesdrop on some of the conversations,and ~
OA.

these were personal problems, family problems, ~

and financial problems and so forth that

individuals had,arid this was a very unusual -

cy

relationship .for an American to have. And

since the American was also running our
quresgret

advisory effort jroo. I just figured that this

constant’ feeding and contact with the echelons

of Vietnamese military that were down below’

the big wheels was again a very healthy

influence that -was constantly at work with

him. “So that he would know very well ‘what’

“was going on in. places.: Some of these problems-—~

personal problems--would actoally involve the

military work that was going forward, people

_ gxiping that something was wrong and so ons

atc they were doing this out of a friendship)
A

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

_ O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

-~72-

and hesvas not to tell.on their bosses or

anything, but usually personal worries and

concern. that Wastes ox something going

: a . oan
‘wrong would @ffect them. Later they moved

in an educdtor--a military educator-- {Paul D.]
Harkins, and. . -@ | | |

Well, [Lt. Gen. Lionel -C.] McGarr comes in.
there before that; doesn't he?

McGarr, It was McGarr, yes, you're right.

it was. before Harkins. McGarr. And McGarr

built. up a staff to work on. counter -insurgency

and probably put together the best staff
Hat. ;

' studies on counter-insurgenc an an
; \/ 3 ¥Y fo y

American military men have ever done.
Is that right?
He got American military men who had ‘been

guerrilla leaders in the Philippines, for

. example)in World War II)and in Burma and so

“A “A

on),and in Europe, and switched most of his,

A : .
work over: into compiling “How to Do it”

manuals, but I've never seen the finished

-73-

products. I saw them working on it at the
time, and all I know is they had tremendous
Stacks of papers with the results of their
typed-out work’ and were putting it together.
. oe

@fand the interpretation of this ‘c= apparently, wore
to: start increasing staff and American military
personnel to ‘handle whatever wipes was

coming up out of this whole process. The

a

feeling was was that there should be closer

; American Supervision of what was happening
a yrits,
(out in Bunks ‘which meant pox you'd put

down your Americans at lower echelons and

then get a separate reporting system on back,
So, oe - A
feeding in the research process of the Americans

oil as A beat et cna en Na i

initially more than anything else. It wasn't

for control; it was just for information that -
would go into fields of studyead this eka fede

Anertvon oo
to a proliferation of anmilitary presence

that was intended sort of for the ‘education

of Americans)I think) more than anything else,
. A A : A

but of course didn't work out that way. You

-74~

put some red-blooded American boys in uniform.
out’ someplace, and they're going to start doing
A a -

“other things as well. In collecting information),
ae Wo: kek A
_they couldn't help but tell a guy, Well, ,if

you didn't do it this way and did it the other
uO _ ) x
_ way, it would work better, and so on. It Wang

a very human. thing that started workings avd

as this happened »we started building up our
; A ;

advisory effort more and more.
é

O'BRIEN: | Well,in the meantime,while this is going on,
oA ; A ,
: . {
the insurgency's building up, isn't it?

LANSDALE: Yes.
O'BRIEN: Just what is the condition of the country-

side that's different from when you're there

a capnelanie 8 ee eee Be a 5 eee tens nl nic tind i

in the middie f£}fties «sede and when you go_
io back in =i. 19b0.¢° .

- Ra penations

LANSDALE: Oh, there were guerrilla,by an enemy )which

i — ' there hadn't been in the period from Geneva

on up to the time I left in the end of ‘56@

You could drive roads at night and so forth


~75-

. . ‘ ! :
and not be worrying about guerrillas. There
were isolated incidents of violence, but.

they were very minor--it would be about
. . wilt. dhe
what you'd expect in any country,crime rate

wad
going! the ; fact that former Vietbss- guerrillas
were the guys pulling the trigger didn't
matter too much as far as the overall crime.

rate went. It was in a nature of minor
Hake
terrorism,was going on. By my next visits
a Lien . :
later in the [SO+S, there were areas of
a

guerrilla bands at work) with roads that were

“A

gs

unsafe and - “So on, FA ,areas that were unsafe,
\

A , A

with great - problems of police posts being

"attacked and with their families being wiped

out in small massacre type of things, though
the type and degree of violence had increased
a. great deal. ” py the end of '60--when I got

7 aol & oy . , .
there xm Christmas of '60--there were fair-

size enemy, Vietcong units operating and

dominating areas/, it had escalated considerably.

by then.

 -76-

O'BRIEN: Is this terrorism campaign on the local

officials as serious as some of the people
, : oe . .
. > An
have written/ abouw-ity

LANSDALE: Oh, yes.

y
O'BRIEN: Do you ever get an fy feeling about the

“number of people? “I've heard all kinds
of estimates:

LANSDALE: — No, I've got [Stephen -T.]} Hosmer 's study
thereon flat , and, I haven't read it yet.
I just got that from him. I imagine he's

"got ‘a figure ‘in. there. The last figure

aroun
I remember on it was-in about ' 66-wassnloet
4

FH oe on

or something a)
O'BRIEN: Forty thousand, That many?

LANSDALE: Yes. These were officials<not their families
A :
or anything. But these were village officials?

and district officials) ana sort of federal
-government officials,
- O BRIEN: Well, what do you see happening as a result of this
: : “A the -« ‘o bil it

in terms of Diem re just simply govern in. those

wl bic
years? ts We Valed 6 govern deteriorating?

LANSDALE:

-77-

_ Yes: In some ways it was. Initially, he

was are ee to delegate any authority
: 1.4 wt

at all and he had the tendency to try and

“A

do everything himself. If the problem

came up in agriculture, he ‘would be the
guy to, do all the Paper. work and the deciding
rather than his Minister of Agriculture and:

so on. He had gotten over that to a very

large extent laters 56 he had learned to be

more the administrator and executive later

on,as far as putting some authority in the
“A a . ;
: .

hands of others. But at the same time, he

also seemed to have lost some of his critical

Ze

faculty, &€,some of the things that were going

‘wrong,: of not being able to see it: He was

getting around the country and visiting) but.
: “A

not aS much anymore because of the security

- problems. He had.been shot at several. times,

A
so that he had a larger and larger security ©

guard around him all the time, which meant

; A
that .when he went in and talked to people,


ee

-start dialogues with his political opposition

-~78-

ry

‘they were very much awere of plain_clothes

policemen, secret service types, all around

him, and others)that were screening out
: , A“ . . a
peoples so that the dialogue between the

president and the people became thinner and

thinner, and less and less meaningful. So

‘while he-was. on paper. becoming a better

executive, he was, in terms-of being the
ce ~ aa :
. ; oa . Co .
national leader, wis being less effective all |.
_ A Se
the time because he had no means of measuring

what was true and what wasn't? what was
tA

a
v

. . . wine’?
woxth doing and wasn't, and what” was’ work

CAV le
winld “ oO. .
and What wasn-ti” It was a considerable

an
impairment of his critical faculty. This

was one of the reasons I was urging him to

‘

| duet
even if it started at opposite poles and,led

a-
to tremendous emotional clashegythét there
would be some means for dialogue to take |

place that would have been useful to him,

particularly if he-had invited them into a

-79-

‘meal or something)and had some way of --
eat “A -

wee

jfactensiag the most emotional irritations

owt of
that would take place, just owt arg’ people

bol
saened- polite at the timej so the content
pubd tase

of what they, nad’ to Say would be something
fF ot
that he..wasn't gettingnelsewise.

O'BRIEN: ves, well, as I understand it) the Vo Vv Jeg” Wwiet
Cong] make -a great deal of headway in those
years on the basis of the land system.

LANSDALE: That was one of them.

O'BRIEN: Welljwhat. . i... As I understand it there's
some rub: between the U.S. in this regard
and Diem about putting through some land
reform which would cure’ some of the rural

' cultural problems that the French had sort
of created, as I understand, from yousicne

the Vietnamese moving into the country. . .@

LANSDALE: Yes, yes.

O'BRIEN: Well, how do you see that? Are you pushing hin
. _& .
for this sort of thing?at Hot polit 2
a, a be hod 2 .
LANSDALE: Yes. Actually,we+reve some very sound land

A


-80-

reform measures on the books and had issued

decrees on them that were good. As usual,

vA

the diffgculty i when you get a piece of
. . - “aA . . we °

legislation Or somethingytis then implementing
A
it correctly) and I was pushing him mostly on

Fg

implementing his measures. “Now ‘the land ‘

. . -Q7
reform worke® that Diem approved and used

“sk,
as the basis for his decrees came from 40/F lade ¢

a ;
and Wolf) wes, wnen he left U.S. employment,

wes actually employed by Diem as his advisor on.
ASE sopject. and Wolf was getting over and
having breakfast with Diem quite a bit.
Wolf is a very articulate, personable type
of a guy yand there was a great deal of .
- aA
affectionate friendship between the two mena
so that Wolf, who is a champion of reforms
and of helping the man on the land, had full
“access to this guy and had a way of doing
things. ana I felt that the main thing. that
‘needed doing was demonstrating to President

Diem, who was sympatnetic towards this, of where’

“A

-Pl-

things weren't going right and changing some.
a ths,
of the inner workings of tre “thing)instead
A A
of sust falting him on intent. And his
‘intent was very sound, very good. I think
he was ignorant of some of these things.

; Fi a
going, wrong. I felt that we should have
bornejdown on the matters in which he was

‘ignorant and tried to get some changes there
-'and make these things work because certainly
A
landlords and others were circumventing
the .law of the land that Diem thought ‘was
operatingpzor when he circumvented it, he
was doing it for good reasons of his own,

“A
which was again open to education by somebody

of hime but he was moving in people whom he ,

could trust--who were refugees--into farm

communities and distributing land to them

for security reasons and political reasons

and so on, and then dictating what they

would grow and’so ongAdcause he'd just figure,
; A.

Well,: in the national economy ,we need this
; A

soniething,and the land will produce i

A
there,and so they should do that. sof he
A sort of .
was only circumvent ing: ‘tthe law,for the
greater good, in his own .mind, if nis own |
extent. ~ ° 4
O'BRIEN: . This centralization. brings about a reaction, ~
; oe ; A
-though, doesn't it?
LANSDALE: | Yes. | os
, we .
TAPE If SIDE I
LANSDALE: You asked about the falling out between

just

something of that nature, but, what it

remember that the American ambassador
Thue ,

A “Spee

Ledejsnsky was having breakfast with Diem

and was close to him, and,in a rather general

pod axked I adejinsky ra
way, to bring up thoughts of corruption
A

 -82-

£ up

Ladejinsky and Diem. I know there was

consisted of, or why, I don't know. I

_ O'BRIEN:  “£t,would have been [Elbridge]’ Durbrow?:

a

4, Nn

type of fiber drown or this type of crop or

“LANSDALE: |. Durbrow-—-- was mindful of the fact that

>

fn UMP SSE Se or ee eS et RR le iE Ee, RA aA atl Ebi Oral been Ai nt he Miele ae wp weenie ee ie i

~23-

the government and subjects beyond anything
Like land reform. And I suspect that
Ledejinsky had’ started getting very political
in his talk ,as a result of this,with Diem,

“A .

Ft. ;
and that Diem had resented it. But beyond...

this, there was a very deep affection between |

_ the two. When I was there in .'59 or ‘60,

2 , oo,
Ladejinsky had wanted to go someplaceand

A
‘I forget where it was. ... . I know one

of the places was Indonesia, but there was
; ae Z
another country he wanted. to go to)and Diem
: —_ had-
hadn't wanted him to go/ and he*suggested
that he attend a conference--I think in
5 .

= oo ;
Latin Americases pared finally, they had agreed |

between the two. “of them, and Lihejinsky had

A fre hod
gone on to: :do these other things, bret, te ken
FH

sort of a sabbatical leave to do that.” But

this was a very personal thing between two -

men, and it was two friends/ rather than a
A

president and his consultant working. I

know re Yaejinsky is very sentimental about

, - a I

“7

-84-

‘Diem as a man, and I know that Diem recipro- |

cated this very much. There was a point.

where the rational thought would end, and.

; A

‘the feelings of affection and so forth

would come over, and say, Well, even if that

is true and everything, I still like the.

guy, and,vant to help him and so ong and

this existéd between the two. soy they

might have’ differed ‘on some things and perhaps :
are : i on carrying out land reform exactly the way: fot

Wolf wanted, but “the two men kept seeing

each other all the time,and he had ample

; “A
opportunity to work on that.
. G- thot's . _
O'BRIEN: penta -the- suggestion sks made sometimes is

that the Vietnamese military nag not been
trained for the kind of war and the kind

of insurgency that they did encounter in
1960-61}-tney had not been properly trained
for that before. Is there any validity

“in this at all?

i a a a |

-85-
we? ce
-LANSDALE:, Oh yes), They were being trained actually to
| . meet the challenge that the Vietnamese and

American top officials. foresaw, and they were
‘thinking shat thes--and incidentally, the
French General [Pau] Ely before he left. was
thinking the same way-- just in terms of
contigency, planning» they saw a lot of artil-
lery. and armor being given the North Vietnamese.
army. So, veteg given that information, they
saw any attack or military trouble in Vietnam
as consisting of divisions of North Vietnamese |
with a lot of artillery and armor coming | |
across the border. So they built up an army

to meet the foreseeable thing that was happenings,
; : 2

that they thought might happen. ” Instead of

this, of course, it was more of the same old

ker lene es a

story againgese. there were many of the officers
in the Vietnamese armed forces who had formerly
been guerrillas themselves, who had formerly
had been viet Hee? in the old: days of fighting
the French, who had proken with the gommunists
“and wanted no pert of the Communists and were

very sincere, patriotic wationalists. But

“high school and so on.

Yo

Br

sincé they had had favg .this former affiliation |
and had teken their basic military training
with the enemy, so to speak, they never quite

had the same stature among their fellow

.officers in the Vietnamese army, for example,

as graduates of the Vietnamese “wilitary
Academy and the others’ coming right out of
GF

So as a result, the

officers corps who were lmowledgeable # he

“of how to counter what was happening were kept

tines
‘at fairly junior grades, and in the late *bis

A

‘the highest any of them gor that I ever knew .

dice
about was ,rank of Majors and they had to take
orders from Golonels and so forth who had
served under the French in very much the

same type of a conventional military organi- —

gation as the Americans had put up and were

advocating. And these junior types who warited
to do different things were simply too junior

to do it and were unable to convince anyone

a
‘of the need. The initial meeting of the threot-

mor --.
was thought, to be a police problem than an

army problem, and there wes a lot of work

1

~87-

on trying to equip and train the national
o ; ; onan
police to cope with itg exia we Americans

did that through our economic mission and

. through, Michi geri State University had a
group helping on administration there. They
recruited some very ‘good police officials from

the v: S. who were quite used to dealing with

Ft

‘urban crime problems in the U.S. Well, you.

can't take aman who is very good at precinct

work in Detroit, Michigan, or pifninghan, Alabama) _

_ or something, and move him’ out tio an Asian a

are a . A
country where his problem is > What do you do

when a company of guerrillas comes in end

“ambushes your/police: station? A completely

foreign type of a thingy EL that we hed
4 a : " who
| police eavisors poet were insisting on all
j

A
‘policemen being armeted with nothing more
i - 7 than,say)a 38-caliber revolver, with the
: . o : A~ A Yo sy : . .

: policemen saying, Weeks but people are
shooting at us with rifles, and we need rifles
or something like that to shoot back at then,
or how about sub-machine guns or some--we

neec x.ore fire power." Well, it was foreign

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

-88-

— A 7
to them. So there was a mixup on a number of

things on this coping with the insurgency ~

: G .
‘ that was growing;<not only the conventional
, ; R . .
formation of the Vietnamese army but of a

: conventional urban police formation of the

police.’ And yet, throughout the syatend’ therey

' there were meny individuals who knew better,

and who knew how to cope With it, and who.

were continually begging, "Give us a chance

“to dQ it some other way."
Well, in terms of these people we were talking

about a | little earlier--the late Eisenhower

people, like Fitegerala/ ana Irwin / ana Parsons--
o they conceive of the kind of insurgency
p dast poiety

or are

that's deve loping in South Vietnam,

they nr)

Fairly well. Fairly well.- They were more
aware of, or had more understanding of, the

needs than did some of the folks that. were
coming in sort’ of brand new to the problem
or who had been steeped in a ‘far more
conventional approach to the problemas were

some of our military leaders at the time. .

But, as I remarked earlier, these were personal

_89-

friends of mine,and when I'd talk to them and
2

tell them my views, there was always sympathy .
for them) so I might have mistaken: that for

ra +
understanding and so .ong and even t that was

|. rare enough so: “that I-felt that, antenmoption) 17
cg. ",

“O'BRIEN: - How long. is the manuscript?
ao

LANSDALE: Ho ho. Ir went through first /--the publishers

wanted me ‘to tell all;. Aaptherporas, just |

write as much as T could for later “edi ting

fey
end, said this is the way people do it. So
: . - very
es -I wound up with really three osansaity long

books, and ‘since I was writing one not too
OA,
long book, why I wound up with a tremendously

ta
long manuscript. . 186 Eegea bcs that I could

we could .
cut it down to two books, and) publish it as
A

two different things, and the subject matter
. would have permitted me. They still want
just one book, so I am now going back with
editor’ 8 notes and with my own notes and trying
to. o 8G tarted off initially with a
cutcand-peste job, but I discovered I couldn't
~ do that and retain the proper narrative and

‘stat og x
RoE ics on ‘the thingy © oi I wound up having


O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE :
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

-90-

to rewrite almost of all of it, and recast it,

and-retell it in a somewhat different form.
I'm about half-way through, that, but it'll be
a fair-size book even so. .
Wert that's goodLmainly on the Philippines
and the early period in Vietnam? .

Umhmm.

‘Good, you know war's really CO)
. Well, there's nesity one pig period in Vietnam

that isn't known too well, and most historians
have passed over ityjand the ones who haven't

have been championing a cause, and their work |
nN

‘is ‘quite suspect. Some of the French were

or
sort of agents c=“ provocateurs at the time,
‘A.

. and they are more or less justifying what

they aia and leaving out. important parts of
it.
How about the French journalist [Jean] Lacouture?

What do you think'of his work? Is it Lacouture

that's done the thing on Ho (Chi Minh]? -

Le
ne I'm trying to remember. I think that's

who it was. Well, most-of the French writings

‘about Ho and some of the explanations in

spre

.O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

-91-

official documents of the French, trying
to explain him end 30 ony by friends, I found
“A Long
ging

very interestinggert I-had. no way of judg

really, on itZthere was a tremendous sympathy

and so corth, being expressed, and then a very.
n°

; , moo.
Strong attempt. to work out an accomodation

oe
with him’ afterwards, with<hin, by the French.

And again, a nighly emotional sensitivity to
any interference awas what they - were trying to
do) and they saw almost anything as interference.
sof what is written by. them, I read mindful

of their sensitivities. at the time and whet
they’ re trying to prevent anybody ever believing
that would be opposite at all) or something _
different at leasts exrd it was just amazing.

The French press was screaming that I was
starting World War III in Vietnam in '55 . . .
Mind if. I get this on tape--well, it is

on tape, I'm sorrys I didn't realize it was
going. ,

. “ simply because « anama there was a feeling

by the French colonialists in Indochina/ of not

wanting to give up the French presence therej**


ge

“and it's a human,understandable type of a-

A
thing. They had been there and. associated

there, and some of them had spent their entire
ives there, end here they were having to

wis,
give up something; end ‘Swiss journalist once

‘explained. it to me{ It was like a man giving’

up his. mistress end seeing some ESevy in a

big car driving by in the stree tgand even.

though he'd given Ne up, he'd just say, well,

he hates that guy/b2cause he got the mistress.

‘allegedly with material means such as an

automobile and maybe a fur coat and so on) and he
isn't the man that the former guy was. 7% go
some of this feeling was very prevalent thereo

and for some reason. or other, I happened to

suddenly become the focal point of it) through

my name or sone thing, @asthey so that. they

-went to great Lengpfls of charging me ‘with all

sorts of things that I was doing: I was vot)

sect frees Qo .
buying up the loyalties of set Goursds with’ -

‘millions of dollars, end things that would be!

hard to prove that . wasn't, mind you, except

Ga¥ to say, "Look, I didn't have ‘a million

dollars to buy anything with." . 4nd they'd

O'BRIEN:

; oe | 993+.

say, "Well, the U.S..government did, and you
, uw “A
were a secret agent for them and so on. It

. was very hard to disprove some of theirjtalk

: wu - , VF sd
and say, Well, that just isn't so. Except
once in a while. they'd get really wild and

claim I wes down--I walked in on a briefing,
“A

. for example, with French officers telling how

7 apo*

some American visitors from Washington mse?

down
at that very moment I was avrying to. buy off

a sect leader, and very naively, with. a
suitcase full of moneypexA I didn't senow

but the guy was going to ambush me end take

. @1l the money and not do whatever I was going

to plan to do. And at that moment, I just
asked him, I said, “Well, please Keep on with

your briefings, I want to know whether the
+ wod j
oe bot Y wey _

guy killed me or not. APrazy- Now these .
4
a

were very responsible French officials ‘and

“the fact that I'd be miles away from the scene

of some of these things never stopped the aww

circulation of these stories. JI don't know

“how you ever stop that stuff.

' Yes
Yeats well how about people like Bernard Pall’

and Patty 2 sex end their writings? Are they. . .@

(RT) Hoey


~ Lohe.

LANSDALE: Well, they' re very sound, very sound. Fall's
vackground, as was Honey's, was out of |
‘intelligence or information collection units
Zid, their different countries. Fall's initial
"writings were all out of a French army historical.
sectis” and I had to tell him one time Ted read
some of his work originally by the original
‘author, “putf it was a deteiled military
history of operations that he'd delved intog
etd T don't know, I doubt that it was intentional
plegarism on his part. He was probably rushing
through, getting a book published» »for academic
credits ‘end: so on. énd Honey the same way .
, with British’ intelligence, who were quite
active in Indochina auring the French days. wat
' But it was )--some of the stories and happenings A
were just nlmost incredible. Thé-.-—.—r=n Some
of the French journalists were ‘politically
partisan. - They had connections wi th the ©
Communist Party or sympathies with them of
some sort. And Ho had been one of the
founders of the French Communist Party, 380 that
there was always a cultural or comradeship

=” :
feeling of some sort therés exd when the

=

-95-

Americans started showing up on the scene)
aw

there was, very paternelistic feeling ot 2
“Well, these Are our people these Vietnamese,”
or Khmer 7 or Lao,® end you keep your
cotton-picking fingers off of them" type of
a thing that went to very great Lengths J——
Volatile emotions erupting on this type of a
thing. I remember one of the journalists,

{John Beret; published a newspaper in Saigon
and wrote a lot of the early propaganda for
individuals. in the French army sad hed ‘sort |
adventurer| types among them. He then went to
Pnohm Penh ,where he. started a weekiy newspaper
and started also writing speeches for LNero dom |
Sihanouk, and the next thing I knew, Sihanouk

- was: "accusing me of plotting to murder him or
assnssinate him, c eT nean Nts eeatéeen near
Cambodia) and I hadn't athought of Sihanouk‘
when this happened. The governor of Siem Reap,

, who had been very close to Sihenouk before-- “

and Siem Reap is where Angkor Wak and the

_ historical ruins are--suddenly died,and the
story started seeping out a little pat with

Sihanouk charging that this governor, whose


ee ee enemewe sae se weet aiemene nia amity Raterae a e 88 cee

O'BRIEN:

-96-

~ TACO De . 7 ae oo,
name was Dap Onn , and I were in a conspiracy
to murder him and take over the government of
Cambodia. And it didn't do any good that I had

never met :!: wn ‘and never had any dealings

with hin, and Cambodia was way outside my

_bailiwickg b but this is the story that's gone

on and: on» and on.

‘Well, there was a little bit of truth to , that,

wasn't theret/gome involvement of CIA. ...

Def Chiywsh Yeso =

LANSDALE: Rae Well, he was a national leader and.

d

actually had formed the political groupings

initially that supported Sihanouk and gave
SO , - 67
him his political powenér-he was the organizer;

he was the chief political lieutenant of

Sihanouk. And then apparently, he felt that

Sihanouk was going sour, and he wanted to get
“A

the government back into reflecting more the

will of the people. . How far he got, I don't

knows but this was really something that

-was foreign to me at the time. / 7 got sent

back into Cambodia afterwards, from Washington,
with Gk various military assistance groups or

>
economic groups 4 presidential commissions”

-97-

and so ong end, gach time they'd have Pnohm
. dust. WwW: Wes:
Penh on the thing, 1 'dAsay, Wer better
check the embassy there. " Back would come
word that? Yo, Sihenouk was ‘efraid that if
r were a member of the party, I would be
going in to murder nim. 7 I actually went in’
one - time} and the chief of police of Pnohm
rN
“Penk met our party--along’ with the: foreign
cae
minister and so on--at plane, ‘when we came
o-
downy and the Chiet of Police walked right
_nmext to me)and he said, "I'm your Li agon
A S-
man fromnwmg!. eid I said, "You're keeping
an eye on me, I knowy it's ‘allright. I'm
not going to murder your boss; I have no
idea of doing that." [Laughter] That is
strange. ” ana then Sihanouk made a movie--
about '65, “166--in which he played the
Khwot
fommander, tod Royal Naval Intelligence foiling
. a | great Americen spy, who happened to have ;
. oO!
my name ) and was a role played by some patnoe Fieachwer
arr who: was visiting theres, and I was out to
overthrow the kingdom,but, of course, our boy
~ A
hero thwarted the ugly ‘American and won the

girl, wno was the daughter of the Brazilian.


-98-

ambassador or something. Some French gal
played the role: I've been trying to get
a print of that or some way of seeing that
‘ movieg@t'd love to see it, you know. It
sounds great and... . .[Laughter]
O'BRIEN: - ects I hadn't heard about that. Weld) thet _

does hit on _Some thing )though) an regard to
Southeast Asia. .. As t understand, in that

7 Dap Crew" incident, onde there: was an Agency
involvement with hin, through a guy by the
name on fifa ‘and the Agency does seem - .

‘to have a kind of free hand in some of these

Misia
r Southeast jnationse emt I'm thinking of the
Fuses &.7
APope ‘situation in Indonesia as well. Can you
\ brokes

see any prosks put on them as'a result of
the change of administrations’how do you
react to this sort.of activity?
LANSDALE: Well, most of the things that they did that
had political consequences of any major size
‘at. all yond certainly a thing with Dae oro
and also the Pope thing,ere only taken by the

Agency after approval up at ‘topside so as far

Non Re ak eed ot Re te en ae eat Renate ahd dle! mh ashi anclolenBive af Baal

~99-

as brakes are concerned) they've had them from
ray

the beginning. However, the objectives and
the intent are approved, and not ihe mesns of 7
doing .it--the nuts and bolts--which are
supposedly overseen by an ambassador. “and
when we get down to the level of a country.

where: ‘these things are happening, then I

think much depends on the individuals: the

7 ambassador, and the station chief, and how

"they get along, and again, mostly on the... ._

Well, no) it isn't either; it's a fifty-fifty
proposition. We have ambassadors who. don't
+o
want to know or OF are opposed, all such’ things ,
A
and if. an order comes down to do it,they very
; = A
unwillingly tell the guy to go shead, but
watch it now, not too far. “A station chief,
. A

then,- with orders to do Some things) will have.
“

‘told the ambassador he samt?’ going to, thiss but

gate WG
he starts, in things, and he figures, thas if he

‘goes back and tells the ambassador what's

happening, that he's not going to get any.
: A

‘understanding and will probably get an order
fn

prohibiting him 3 Be$ doing something Sp anc ,won't -


“O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN:

" Washington wants us to have this happen.

-100-

, Se
be-able to explain, Well, if I stop doing

this, then this other thing won't work, and.
y

just \
The ambassador will ysay,. No, I don't see -it

that way. Don't. do it. ? So I'm sure there are
things thetare. } happening that aren't sold for
this--for operational reasonsg and again, it's

a judedment of an individual on that thing.
It's not a policy type of a thing from the
Agency. | . , .

vat? Do you find any--in the time that

you tre there in the middle fifties as well

as when you go back in '60, ‘61, and later —
involvement in Vietnam--do you tina differences
between the embassies “between the U.S. embassy
in, particularly, Pnofim Penh and Saigon?

I didn't notice ‘that. It might have oxiated

“A
and I wouldn't have even known that.

‘Well, there! S some feeling. among people

char

. involved with Cambodien relations ee that time,

as I understand it, that somehow there's an
involvement on the part of the South Vietnamese

in some of the groups like the .. .«@

SA al eA i 6 invari Dhe at Ds din i Dlnto-canbaanedh eh Data, dain Nila 8 lhe he pnt 20 epee oleh tee

cree, nme eA An Mele once san 1 Oe. medina neleden,

_ LANSDALE:

-101-_

‘
|
TL cee ea”
YNS06

Oh, yeeh. , Both the South Vietnamese and the.
ths were playing eround with groups inside
Cambodia) or with exile groups that wanted .
to go back in Cambodia; end so ong and I'm
not certain thet the Americans from either
Thailand or South Vietnam were fully aware
of what all was going on. And I'm not
certain that the- Americans or the Cambodian

government people inside Cambodia knew what

was going on, and were tending to oxeggerate

some of this. Things get blown up out of all;
proportion in this. But) just. the fact that
there was antipathy and it would take this
form of expression, among others: that were
going on. . . 4 { don't know which people
would rather go in and take over and run
Cambodiat Leng Thai fs « or the South Vietnamese?
it's about’ a ‘boss up which one Se down more
on the Khrers than the other. 4 ana Diem
used.to follow the predictions of the royal

fortune~teller in P nohm Penh to Sihanouk.

‘Apparently, they were spending a lot of
“A

intelligence money to find-out, you know, what S

O'BRIEN:

 -102-

happened in each otherssessions and what
he was telling the guy. Then how useful

this was mind you, T don't know.

2

"Well, do “you. cind)-again, in passing on to

’ the ‘bask toree Zand the formation of that.
‘Vietnam task. force in the early part of

’ the Kentie dy administration--do you find the 0
sensitivity on the part of the people, the
political appointées, to what's going on
in South Vietnam? Are you able to explain
what you're telling ‘me right now about

South Vietnam to these’ people?

LANSDALE: us, only partially. They were as bemused by

the mechanics of getting decisions in Washing-
ton asthey were with the problem that they were.
employing the mechanics to solve. It was all
sort of new to them,and they vented to do a
good job, but in order to do it, they were

you ge)
suddenty working with these instruments, that
were foreign to them here. I think that the
principe” in the administration were not
entirely aware of thespeople they were dealing
with in Washington. I recall, at the time, Some SuAptisess

A
FG Rusk was violently opposed in the department :

-103-
over where he was by some peoples and I
noticed at times that he wasn't aware that
he was. turning around and. asking a guy who)

“minutes before Rusk had come in to pin wee

: in fis pape Mee C called him, A 7
_ among his comrades, just; "This stupid jerk," 7
end 80 on, which I felt was ai sloyal-behind ;
the guy" s back, you know. T was always
urging them to speak up in “front of people
and 80 on, and they woula ts do it. And the
oF
same _damn thing was true pageinsh’ some of the
_ military against McNamara, for example.
Sie’ . :
_ fi Well, the ‘McNamara’ and ‘the “Rasid end their
‘ ot : y we yard $c tn)
unders , and deputy 7 types of people, and
assistant secretaries, were trying to cope with

enctechtr[y =
people that they, felt Were=fnstinet ively:

opposing and foot-dragging and so on, and
. . A .

trying’ to get that working,so that to get

} , ‘them working on a given problem was really
the thing that they were concerned with send

F you'd suddenly say, "well, we're going to
talk about tees,” or Vietnang or Israel or

' . something®Yes, yes, Fes. What have you got

jhe

in jpn papery you knowty And they were


coet dymab ip ease cot des ed en aaante Demet te es nett al Abies 2mm iit mtinn the stale di ea nko cae

: ; —_ -10h-

dp w - 7 ha Shire guy a.
watching, seej: "Well, itis=just—H6 really

r ok “Es he goey
done rhis homework) end-is—it-gonka come.up
A

with some thing or not?" rather than what is

the real problem here, and how would I solve
“a

it if I weren't sitting in this room in this

particular group, and so on. So there was a. ...

FP so then, working on this type of a ‘thing which

O'BRIEN:

LANS DALE:

I saw very much in the task force on vVietnam--

Gilpatric,I know,)was shocked at the reactions

_ of some of the foreign service people that

came in at, rank of ambassador and so on, that
; . : A
were sort of the staff assistants on the

. assistant. secretary and undersecretary level.

pag ht
They would . ‘Start a mesting—in-facty I was

asked to be sort ot fr forget what the title
was )-executive officer or something of it, and
they asked me to chair the meetings. Well, I'd
no sooner open it. thon these guys would be
passionately explaining why I ‘founan's be
Sitting in the chair of the. meeting, ‘see?

ech. %e@

I think it shocked some of the Kennedy

administration people. It suddenly revealed a

ne

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN:

-105-

Pd

_feud-and so ong ené I hadn't said it, and I

personally didn't care that much, you knows

I'd say, "Have you got all the hate out of

your system now? Let's go on with the

meeting,’ ’ see. This )of course, would activate

it more,but I would sey, myerr look, we really
A

do have some probiems here we've: got to get

to, and if you want, 122 meet you afterwards
A

oO
and wesvan have lunch or something) and you

Pay
can spoil my lunch by telling me what a

heel I am or something. But we've got work

Fi
to do." So then, Gilpatric or somebody would.
tell me af terwards, "Do you think we better
take you oft" "Well, yeah. If it's going

} Gu Cc. oan
to ortets, the work done, itis better 45 take
me off. It's no fun for me to sit up and

: y
chair something under conditions like this,

SO. . -@
o- : , |
Feah. Were you ever approached with the job
as ambassador to Vietnam?
Yos, Yese comm
¥eah:—-Yeeho

Who was pushing thet?

a a ne ee Sn, Tn

LANSDALE:

-106-
; the G

I don't know. I heard abcut it thes first.
‘Saturday after the ineugurel--I think that's
it. It was very early in the administration.
McNamara asked me to come down to the White’
House and meet him there, and I thought it
was to brief him on something. ina I wes
working on a number of intel Tigence matters: .—

in Defense at the times esa I showed up) and

he askéd me to just wait outside, and they
“ oO

were meeting in the Cabinet roomy and as I

said, it was essentially an NSC ‘group. F ani
ws 1
after a bit, they asked me “to: come on wend

A

they had me sit opposite the president.

And he looked at me,and he said, "Did Dean
“2 ;

(Rusk] tell you’ I want you to be ambassador

to Vietnam?" I said, "No, he didn't mention

. . O-
that." Well, he hadn't at alls = evd ghere was

a ae painful silence and I figured, "well,
A

exe, maybe he! s asking me if I want to beyor
would I accept the joo.” So I finally said,
“Well,it would be a great honor,” ana thet was

A . :
the last I ever heard of it. put Jt heard
all sorts of rumors that “Reps “for

TL
fos

‘Washingtong and=Snin is afterwards that Dean Rusk

Ten nn cn nt ee a ee mene ee emt i tte ee ee ei moe

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

oa

-107-

was very much opposed to it, and opposed on

the ground that I. was a military men and they
didn! Ywent military: people in on the situation.
ech. Yaso

And then later I kee met one of Rusk's staff
officers at the time, and he Was telling me
that Rusk was eiguving Sn ne could get.

me a job some other place or a promotion or

something - to. get me out of the way at the tim oe
sort oF
F apparently © had becomeAa target for a lot of
and 69 on Fr ;
gossip and rumors,at the time. But after that,
“A
then, they asked me--Kenne dy asked me pretty
Aistrassadot

point blank--about Durbrow, and I said, "Well,
ray

after-what you just asked me and so forth, I'm

‘a little hesitant, but you're the President .and

you need the truthg so I'll just tell you right

now, TI think he's a very ill manf, his juage~

ment's impaired by his physical conditions, he's

a fine professional foreign service officer.and

could be used some_place, but don't keep him on
A

in Vietnen anymore. He's sick ihe! s on his

back .a lot of the time, and you ‘need someone
ro “A

‘very alert, whr “hir-~whoever it is, and pull him ~
mre 9 and 3

“A


-108-

out." And they got--Rusk and everything, you
know-4"You're off your subject, boy." But I
said, "Well, Durby's an old friend of mine,

and I like the BUY wD. ond I saw a lot of him
ave

when I was in Vietnem on this brief visits ena

I think it's a shame that the guy's kept on -
there LZcause he was quite ill, in bad shape."

. Y
And Durby never forgave me for its, it got

-yight back to him that I had sacked him and

. . so on cause he was withdraure after thaty 2 but

| O'BRIEN:

* LANSDALE:

this certainty didn't hurt his. career at all,
in any way, ena even though: State put him on
a make ~work job after thate but he held the
rank of ambassador which . is as nigh as you
can get in the foreign service. And he was

14, he really was.

Well, how does [Frederick E.] Nolting come into

A
this...

: Cc. :
Well, Nolting came in, as= ssthie., apparently, as the

“
foreign services rebuttal to my going on  outd of flue

I remember both McNamara and ‘Gilpatric asked

me about him, end I didn't know him. I said,
ras

. “Well, I'd just go on what I heve heard from

ae

other foreign service officers who respect

him very much." So finally, Nolting was--

& “meeting was arranged with Noting, and

I liked him very much when I talked: Sale .himg
He asked me if I would give him some briefings
on Vietnam, which I did do. And when I wound
up thé'end of that, I was asked again by _.
McNemara, who ‘Said he was going to tell
Kennedy end I said, “Well, this looks like

a very good man, and I think it's a sound

appointment." " z didn't want to be. ambassador.

Jesus. ‘During the Eisenhower administration,
4o 2

they wanted to make me ambassador oe the

Philippines, and I begged them not to. I
A

cite enet one emer

think that's one of the world's worst jobs.

You're stuck where you can't do what your

‘

job is supposed to be, and I knew they were
. , A

| , ‘going to put me in places where I'd be up
against Communist political leaders of some

sort, working the other side. and of course;
ral

you aren't in that position, but allegedly

Oo. ie oe
you ares <td you ‘pe-going-to have people running
Cn ae
circles around you £2, "youlnow it and couldn't

a

lift a ‘little finger to stop them. Ad this


‘but Nolting and I had very friendly relations,

-110-

isn't my idea of a good spot to be in. You
just get belabored over that.

Well, did Nolting ever try to get you back to
A

o
Vietnam/ in an advisory position? .

I think so. There were a number of attempts

by the Vietnamese themselves, and unfortunately)
; a fn.
some of them were’ ouched in terms of wanting

“me to come out as ambassador, by the Vietnamese

N

and I think he had proposed that I come on

out several times. But these things would
usually only come to me sort of second or
third hands and one time apparently President
Kennedy had said something to the JCS because
suddenly my, relations with the Chiefs went
down to leds than zero. and sub-zerog ead I

finally asked General (Curtis E.] Lemay of

the Air Force, because I'm an Air Force officer,

what the trouble was. And he said, "You and
your ambitions to have four stars." I said,
"What's this again?" Apparently Kennedy had
said something to the Chiefs of) what. would
they think of my being given four stars and

being put in cherge of

operations in Vietnam?


-lli- |.

And I.didn't know about it, and they took it

that 7 was pushing myself for it. I said

65024 AS

again “that isn't, te yant to do. Y So this
» Gopal

was about the time that--no, maybe (William
Westmorelend] Westy was coming in about then

it was around that time. .
O'BRIEN: Well, the: ‘task: force really forms up the instructions

for Noting, doesn't ith...
LANSDALE: Yes.
O'BRIEN: ... for the next 1 few years. Just what kind

of recommenéations come out of that task |

' force? ; .
LANSDALE: Well, I was only in on the very original one,

which was to undertake some things such as

changing the spécific types of things to
‘meet a situation injthere. One of them wasy
we would get a political section that would -
work out better relations with the Vietnamese
government, a political section in our embassy,
and that the foreign service would go and
search through their own personnel for people
with some real political savvy to get ino

w

guide,’ rather than control cr belabor or have

confrontations with the Vietnamese government

Be .

-ll2-

to carry out essentially political reforms,
and getting some of the just criticism of.
the opposition considered in the governing
ody. “another thing was on the police, of
getting police training done so that they .

could cope with meeting enemy units, rather ~

than doing urban police work. In this, I

was begging them to at least get to a state -
leve -

constabularyyjas far as American advisors were

concernedy and I wasn't certain that the U.S. °
Army's military police could cope with it, but
maybe they could get a team of them in,exa
then I was pointing out that there were
constabulary officers and officers from other
countries, including South America and the

old Philippine constabulary, who knew the.

law-and-order conditions~-auite similar to
“A \ .

Vietnam--and bring them in if they wanted to

go international. I.was trying to. get them

‘to get very realisticad solving problems by

changing the quality and the approach that _

Fi
we had. We drew up an original draft that

went to the President, out of meetings that
. * “A

oy

Cae ee eens ne ed A Rane AE Nie On me ip etl ea hel

-113-

lasted about ten days, at which point, at
Rusk's insistence, the task force went over
to State and became e general, regular body —

there. They then proceeded to rewrite our

original eny instructions and drafts and >

everythings, ex both McNamara end Gilpatric
y
A A
you had better not get in there." I said,

said<2coming back from the White Houses*"Ed,

"If I can help in any way, I will." They said,

se

i

"Well, right for the time being ,youdbetter not) 7
go near that group, sees" Dt ‘sctually didn't | (
get in to some of their policy formation, again

in a fairly early period, on the thrust of

things in Vietnamyexcept for some of the

Defense people who were over there. I would

talk to them on what was being proposed and |

“going on,: but this was sort of second and

third echelon type of a thing, pulling back

out of st. “put f ini tially) I was actually

trying to get a quality U.S. representation

in Vietnam, and actually smaller egein than

it was at the time, and to pick a few key

things, and to concentrate on that,and really
A n


O'BRIEN: .

= 11y-

to get the Vietnemese coping with their own

problems more effectively than they were
doing.
coe . : . .
Yeu. Well, between this time and the time
A Puig Yd 3 ,

of the Taylor>Rostow mission, ave you involved

in Vietnam on a kind of regular basis or. .°-©

o- .
LANSDALE: Uh, no.’\.0ff and on I was, but again with

, second- and: third-echelon type of problems.

I was seeing Gilpatric everyday and working’

very closely with him,so that .a lot of times,

A “

as things would come up),he would discuss them
. “A ‘

with me. ‘But again, I was trying to explain
who certain people were that were named, their
backgrounds, and their qualities, and certain
events and places, and going to maps with

. sos : . Oo”
him and describing terrain, and so ong, “anat
aA A

" -the situation really meant that was making

the problem. So I was fairly well out of it. -

fas a matter of fact, I was working with some

visiting Burmese on their concepts of defense
of a country) and @&éy they brought me in with
the Israeli whe had had a mission helping them
with their defense problems in Burma. And the

qh O-
. c

Israeli had Cris turmed around to their Gefense

me seater 9 enh a Neen eda a aes ee mete rr bea ean te ken abil il ha fim adam haath in ch? fade nae Sie fo Libs oa a ee ASR ati annonce ene rast ab nee te oe racine be!

Re.

~115-

minister and some of the others,and invited
fake &
me to,look at their defense system in Israel.

FI was quite enthusiastic about going and had

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:
O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

everything arranged and was to leave on a
Saturday, wnen about on a Wednesday or Thursday 7
I was asked to go to Vietnam with the other
mission and stuff, ef unfortunately had to
cancel out everything and never got inlto see
what TAwanted to see there.

Well) you end up working on border _-actually,
the Sse of the border’ 2 then, don't yous | ‘
trot A
on , bas" Taylor- -Rostow thing? ;

Yes. Yes.
What about that preoccupation? Where does
7,

that idea come from*is that Rostow's?

Well, ‘Taylor was the one that charged me

with it. Taylor said, nba J you boiss J vi
: he
this ise flight which startea-‘yfi11 each

hat -
of you write down some of the things, you

think we should look into and what you might

like to look into." So I gave him a list of

Yor cS

about twenty things, I'd like to look into=
7,

none of them being this,of course. 2
. . A .


--116-

Z suggested some other subjects for other people
- on the thing ane gave it to Hee ett he
called me back, vaaid that it was a very interesting
seine I had given him, end would I please work
on building a defense on the border. And I
‘said, “FEZ yhat sort ofa defense?” He said,
“Well, a system of fortifications or a wire like
the Iron Curtein in Europe. I said, "Good
God, you aren't going to do that, ere you?"
And he said, "Well,look into it." So that
Supposedly A c-
. washall I was supposed to do, and of course,
" I got called in on other things immediately.
@ But I wasn't even invited along to go in and
see Diem with him. I said, “Look, these are
old friends of mine. If you'd Like, why I'll
do anything I can fo you can hit then high, and
“I'll hit’ them low if you want. We can get
some things done that -way.” He said, “Well, you
aren't on our protocol list, so you ‘don't
attend any of these calls on the President.
F we landed in Saigon, and the people from the
were Pere and “£G

presidency, met uss afd Taylor and Rostow were

over talking with reporte=s who were interviewing

ee ee ee ee

Leek pane eee ae ee tee

-117-

them pilene side, and these people from the
presidency said, "President Diem wants you

-to come to dinner tonights" and I said, "Well,
I better check “ie ny boss on vtnig. Taylor was .
busy, but I grabbed Rostow who wasn't talking
at the moment and told him, end he said, "Go°
ahead." sof said, "wera T wasn't even on

the protocol, end everything. I don't care
about going up to these protocol meetings
anyhow, we" went in and saw Diem, whose *
question was, "What's this mission doing-here?
What are’ you all up to?" I said, "Why don't

you wait, and they'll be in here to have a
ro

pee eres dimen a ese Rh ee Cine, mame Ore oapetnkahl ie Zednetin “A tetannteis dn wyeet ainer nant nme: Se ann wt mene ahaa,

meeting with you tomorrow, and you'll find
A .
out." And then it became very personal. We

-" la

just started talking over, hts two old friends
‘toch onion, and I had dinner with him. Aana he
-prought his nephew in.to join us--Nhu's boy, ~
oldest boy--who had a new toy missile, like a
rocket with a launcheng and I was trying to |

explain to this youngster who was squatting

a. rea
on the floor next to his uncles the Presiden’ te.
: E suid, ; ‘A '
who was busiiy eating dinner-“you don't point this

cin

img2T dién't know how big a spring this

&

eT |

O'BRIEN:

me

LANSDALE: ©

-118-

thing had on it, whether it would take his.
oS Tan Fe) ht
head off or not. FReisrrer} I pokd him to

shoot it up into the ventilating fan in the

ceiling. We spent dinner actually, teking
parachutes and things out. of the ventilating

fans,and the kid and I were climbing up
A

a ladder’ ‘to get these things out of the thing

in the palace. This was very different: from
an official protocol meeting.

Yodo How is Diem at that point?

He was a very changed man. It was the first
time in our talks with each other......
When I met him at the palace that night, his
brother Nhu came in for the first time and
sat next to himy a and when Tjaske® Diem a

question, his brother would. answer it® a and

[id havé to tell him I wasn't asking him the

oO. .
questiond I was asking his brother. A very
strange relationship at the timeg end I

(a,
found that he was a talker--Diem was--and he
was very clear and concise in his statements
; woe
and had too big a grasp of details “i8 wnat-

ever subject he was talking evout. It'd go

on for hours--details on it, which fascinated
. - 4

0
LANSDALE:

'BRIEN:

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

-119-

me but used to ‘bore other people. But he

ee _
did know his countryy and its history, which
ron

he would give at the drop of a hat. This
. evening in '61, seeing hin, he was very

hesitant in his talk and magn boat was

some thing physical as well as mental hazard

A

or sonething, I felt.

Any yevid ERO 6
porerhe pen gotnte’ that later?

No. There was j-nenvally, people were telling

-me that his brother had ‘baken over in the

+ ho Gast the

year following gthss-7 8 dominance onsthing.

. But this: was a man that wasn't as sure of

himself as he had been when I had seen him

less than a year before. And there had been
one assassination attempt only, but the vig
one had taken place ‘before I saw him in .

January or December of '60--the attack on

' the palace and so on. So it hadn't been an .

outside, physical happening like that that
had caused the change.

Was he a spiritualist at all? -
CL
No, no. He wasn't superstitious. wo He
. ~

was a very rational sort of a person-~--pragmatic.


O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

O'BRIEN: -

-120-

Well when you get back, you talk to President
Kennedy and Robert Kermedy/ and John MeCone »
eas I understand, in a rether private meeting.

What happened here?

Well, this was,when I came back, I met the

AN

President. I went in with Taylor ‘and Rostow--—

all oftis did who - were out on the “mission--and
| joo! Wed

he thanked us all very machg 2 and as we were, ne

-asked me to stay behind and talk to “himg ok

that was when he asked me to perform this

other service for him) which was initially to
A
think about it,and if I came up with some

ron

ideas, why to ‘put them down, «= ~brh ety
“a

wii
on paper and give them to him.”

fnd I said,

ra
"Well, do you want, bo forget sott Vietnam

for the time being )because I haven't written

“A . .

my report yet about Vietnam." He said, "Yes,
Jt a

this other takes priority over it;,so

es

didn't even finish writing my reports on what

‘ZT had seen in Vietnam at the time. I went

immediately into this other work.

Well,about that time, there's at least some
fay :

thinking in terms of mimos that are going

to the Presicent sodout the only wey to save Vietnam
A

LANSDALE:

-121-
. : fe :
is with a rather substantial commit$ment of
U.S. troops. Is that... .@ .
Yes; there was some. Now where. ... . Hm,
there was some, and I can't remember just

a ;
where it was coming from. This was one of

reed
the things, that Diem asked me when I saw him.
He asked: me if he should ask for U.S. troops,

and I said, "Do you need them?" He said, My

asked rou a question," and I said, "Well, I'm

asking. you a very legitimate question on this

things ih + said,"Are you ready to admit that
you have so lost control of your situation
that you can't cope with it here?" And I said,
"You'd have to do that before you ever turn
around and ask for American troops in here."
And he said, "No, we can still handle things,
. v7)
end you've answered my question, so apparently
. : & fad :
<— he didn't ask. 4 onere reve been some
Tin SUD CH
conversations, going on -Eim-Sure. with some of
The |
the Americans befor: that, would be my guess
on this thing hcause he didn't say, "What
| ; Tod oo ;
do you ‘think Of wap earnest snthens anything, of
a “A
“should I ask?" which was sort of like somebody

>

had recommended this at some voint,and [
A

ce a  *

O'BRIEN: .

LANSDALE:

2122-

don't think it would nave been completely in
o- ow
Bee aVietnanese context.

veéh, do you get eny of this thinking" when you

| get pack? Any contingency planning or thinking ©

ra

about the building ,of troop levels to a more

substantial Jevelyemaybe linked with the
settling ‘of the Leotian question first? -

There might have been, and I might have known -
some of it. I can't recall now of nye it's

someplace in the back of my head ,there were

-§ome things like that going on. I turned.

around, just took time off completely from

other things and concentrated on this other
problem for a time afterwards. Actually, through

December of that year, I was sort of holed up

; q ;
and working on some things. My staff would get

in and out of some of these other things) and

ara)
I used to shove them in to take my place in

O- _ cous
meetings and so on, and I posn® only then just
get very quick briefings on them, but they were
essentially supporting whatever McNamara and

Gilpatric were doings so I'd just -have them

_go in and report directly and work with them

directly.

O'BRIEN:

LANSDALE:

soul

O'BRIEN:

-123-

ve ;
Yes. whe uw

Yesh. Who were the people, | on your staff

at that point?

a :
Well, let's see? One of them was Sam Wilson,
A

whdse’ now a brigadier general in the army fo
A .

Jack Bowles: was a Navy Captain who went down _
. . J ;

to serve with the JCS afterwards and.is now

with Standard Oil and working out of Singapore...

feat fray

And I had five or six K people Like that, but those
were my two “princi dones.
Well, this is about ready to run out, and we! ve

oS
covered fuel Qu A Lito
. i f

